Charlottesville’s Fashion Square mall no longer exists, but the administration of justice over the 2023 shooting at the shopping center that left two men and a dog seriously injured still had one last hearing Monday.
Circuit Court Judge Cheryl Higgins was asked to drop the two six-month jail sentences that were part of the year-ago plea agreement for the now 21-year-old shooter, Jalontae Truriel Percer.
“The court is going to decline the motion even though it was well presented,” Higgins told Thomas Wilson, Percer’s attorney.
Wilson informed the court that, due to a change in state law that construes serving 65% of certain sentences as completion, his client has after two years already served his mandatory minimum three-year firearm sentence. All that was left to argue were the deal’s provision of a pair of six-month sentences for unlawful wounding.
Percer took the stand in Albemarle County Circuit Court to talk about his two years behind bars.
“I learned a lot about myself,” Percer testified while wearing the lime green jumpsuit that is the new uniform of the local jail. “I matured a lot.”
He said he took classes in decision-making as well as a course about reducing risk.
“How to not have intrusive thoughts,” he told the court, “to reduce the rate of recidivism.”
Despite having taken another class on construction and electrical work, Percer said he was eager for most any work when released and living with his mother in Richmond.
“I’ve got a lot of exposure with fast food,” he said.
In the early evening of Sept. 13, 2023, just before closing time at the Supreme Green cannabis shop inside the now-shuttered Fashion Square, Percer was among a group of four teenagers trying to buy intoxicants. Testimony at his preliminary hearing indicated that after getting told they were too young to shop at the store, the teenagers made so much trouble — including climbing behind the counter and jumping at the shop owner’s dog — that they were asked to leave.
The two shopkeepers were so rattled by the encounter that they jointly walked to the owner’s car with a plan to drive together to the other man’s vehicle. While passing a mall exit the car slowed, and Percer stepped off a curb and unleashed eight rounds from a handgun, an incident caught on surveillance camera. Both men were struck by multiple rounds, and the store owner testified that one bullet puncturing his chest missed his heart by 10 centimeters.
As bullets blasted the vehicle, the dog, the one Percer had harassed inside the store, was also injured.
Percer was originally charged with an array of crimes including two counts of malicious wounding and animal cruelty. At an earlier hearing, Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Susan Baumgartner said that she agreed to the deal, which lessened the wounding charges and dropped the cruelty charge, because she wasn’t certain about Percer’s motivation when he fired his weapon. The shopkeepers, the evidence showed, had loudly talked of getting a gun of their own while the teenagers were inside the store.
Bolstering her concern that Percer could have successfully waged a self-defense claim was the pause of the car carrying the men near the mall exit.
“My feeling about this case is a little mixed,” Baumgartner told the court Monday.
“Mr. Percer has done what we hoped he would do,” she continued. “He’s gone to a lot of classes. He’s an older and much more thoughtful person.”
However, Baumgartner also told the court that she worried that fully suspending the two unlawful wounding sentences would diminish those charges.
“That’s why I’m submitting this to you,” she told the judge.
The judge said that she had already granted Percer two concessions: approving sentences below the midpoint of the state’s voluntary sentencing guidelines and holding off on imposing them until Monday’s hearing to keep Percer at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail instead of the Virginia Department of Corrections.
“I did not want that to happen,” she said of sending him into the state prison system, “based on his sincerity.”
But she said she was not willing to fully suspend the unlawful wounding sentences, despite Wilson’s wish.
“It would just be a step too far,” the judge said.
Percer showed no obvious emotion upon the judge’s ruling.
“He’s a good person,” a woman who described herself as Percer’s stepmother told The Daily Progress after the hearing.
“He’s a loving brother, stepson and son,” said the woman, declining to give her full name.
In 2022, the Virginia General Assembly crafted new rules that can provide credits for people serving jail sentences that allow up them to serve as little as 65% of their sentence. The new policy rolls back Truth in Sentencing, a more stringent policy enacted by legislators during the governorship of George Allen in 1995. That policy, widely described as parole abolition, mandated that a person serve a minimum of 85% of their sentence.
The judge also sentenced Percer to five years of good behavior with two years of supervised probation with a provision for mental health counseling.
Except for the Belk department store, which remains open, and a new Home Depot, which held its grand opening on Aug. 28, the bulk of Fashion Square mall just north of Charlottesville city limits closed on Jan. 31. Supreme Green moved to Westfield Road.
Stressing their wish to move past the incident, the men injured in the shooting have declined Daily Progress interview requests.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com
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