“The jury embraced this case for what it was, which was not simply one of self-defense, but of the larger issues within our criminal justice system that ended with a 17-year-old kid unwittingly forced into being the neighborhood watch when all of the other actors in the system who should have been protecting him failed to do so,” Brandon Sloane, Valentine’s attorney, said Friday in a statement.
Fairfax County juries rarely return not-guilty verdicts in murder trials. In the 10 murder and manslaughter trials held in 2023, one person was acquitted of manslaughter, according to the Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney.
The way prosecutors tell it, Valentine, then 17, knew Fieldings well in the months leading up to Fieldings’s death at 25.
Fieldings, who was unhoused, resided behind a local Dollar Tree where Valentine worked as an employee. Valentine’s family would allow Fieldings to use their house to shower, do laundry, and eat. Authorities said Keisha Hill, Valentine’s mother, set up a CashApp debit card on Fieldings’ phone to give him money periodically.
On the day of the shooting, Fieldings and Valentine were fighting over text regarding the CashApp card, which Fieldings believed was locked. Officials said as part of the dispute, Fieldings threw a brick through the family’s window earlier in the day. Although Valentine’s mother called 911, Fieldings was not arrested in the incident before his death.
Later that evening, Valentine, who was armed, went to work at the Dollar Tree, where security footage and eyewitness accounts show the dispute continued in the shopping center.
Footage played in court showed Valentine driving away from the parking lot and Fieldings chasing after his car on foot. The two return later in the evening. In the moments before the killing, evidence captured Fieldings sprinting toward Valentine, who was sitting in his car. Sloane said it was then that Valentine fired once at the man to protect himself.
Fieldings was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead from a gunshot wound to the upper body, police said at the time.
“A prosecutor’s job is to get all the evidence in at trial and make the strongest argument possible to the jury,” Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano said in a Friday statement. “While this is not the outcome we sought, it is the jury’s role to assess the facts of the case and share their verdict, and we respect that role.”