Wife of Man Killed by Virginia Beach Officer Disputes Police Account in Jail Interview

The wife of a man fatally shot by a Virginia Beach police officer last Thursday has given her account of the encounter, offering a version that differs from the one authorities have described. Jacqueline Ortiz spoke with News 3's Kelsey Jones from the Virginia Beach City Jail on Sunday.

According to police, the incident began when an officer stopped a car reported stolen on Newtown Road. DeShawn Whitaker was driving, and Ortiz, his wife, was in the passenger seat. Authorities said Whitaker got away when the officer tried to detain him. As the officer then tried to take Ortiz into custody, Whitaker returned and pointed a gun toward the officer, who fired and struck him. Whitaker later died at a hospital.

Ortiz was briefly hospitalized for injuries before she was charged and taken to jail. She now faces four charges and is being held without bond. Her next court appearance is scheduled for March 10.

Police have said Ortiz resisted and reached for a gun when the officer tried to arrest her. Ortiz disputes that. She said that after the officer tackled her and her shirt rose, she told him she was armed but would not act on it. "I couldn't even reach it," she said. She also told News 3 that she is not legally allowed to have a gun.

Describing the moments before the shooting, Ortiz said the last thing she heard before her husband fell was "get off my wife," and that he then reached into his bag. "My husband didn't even get to fully pull his gun out of the bag before the officer shoots him in the head," she said.

She questioned the officer's choice of where to aim. "He could have shot my husband in the arm, leg, the side, anywhere else," Ortiz said, adding that she felt the officer "was doing it on purpose." She said she is grieving deeply: "Right now I feel like I lost a piece of myself."

Ortiz also addressed the stolen car. She said she and her husband did not learn the vehicle was stolen until about a day before the stop. A friend had given the car to them, she said, and she suspected it was stolen. She said she regrets not reporting it to police.

She said she feels partly to blame for what happened. "If he didn't feel like he was protecting me in that moment he would've never come back," she said. Asked by Jones whether she would have done anything differently, Ortiz said she would have suggested taking a Lyft to his mother's home and getting rid of the car.

In an earlier interview, News 3 law enforcement analyst Larry Boone, a former Norfolk police chief, said the shooting was justified. He noted that officers are often outnumbered and enter situations without knowing how many people are in a vehicle or what their state of mind is. "There's no such thing as fair," Boone said.