Virginia man acquitted in deadly 2021 high school basketball game shooting

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A Virginia jury has acquitted a man in the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old outside a high school basketball game in 2021.

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The Newport News Circuit Court jury took about 50 minutes last week to find Demari Batten, now 20, not guilty of manslaughter in Justice Dunham’s death, The Daily Press reported.

A Virginia jury has cleared Demari Batten of homicide charges.

The shooting happened as fans left a game at Menchville High School against Woodside High School on Dec. 14, 2021. Batten, who was 18 at the time, testified that he was in a friend’s car when Dunham and other teens attacked him and tried to grab his gun. Batten said Dunham, who was wearing a ski mask, opened the driver’s side door and was coming toward him when he fired in self-defense.

“I characterized it as a mob assault,” Mario Lorello, Batten’s attorney, said after the acquittal. “He has always stood by the fact that he believed that his life was in danger and that there was the potential for great bodily harm.”

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Batten faced only a manslaughter charge in last week’s retrial. He was convicted of three firearms charges in a 2022 trial, but jurors stalemated on the manslaughter charge. A sentencing date for those charges hasn’t been set and Batten remains in custody.