Teen acquitted in Menchville High slaying
Defense asserts 2021 shooting was in self-defense
NEWPORT NEWS — A jury in Newport News Circuit Court last week acquitted a former student in the killing of a 17-yearold during an altercation outside a Menchville High School basketball game just over two years ago.
The 12-member jury took about 50 minutes to find Demari Antonio Batten, 20, not guilty of manslaughter in the shooting death of Justice Michael Dunham on Dec. 19, 2021, as fans cleared out of the packed game against Woodside High School.
Batten, 18 at the time, testified that Dunham and other teens were attacking him — and trying to grab his gun — while he was in his friend’s car in the parking lot. He said Dunham — wearing a ski mask at the time — opened the driver’s side door and was coming toward him when he fired in self-defense.
“I characterized it as a mob assault,” Batten’s attorney, Mario Lorello, 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.”
It was the second trial in the case.
The first, in October 2022, ended in a hung jury.
While jurors could have convicted Batten of second-degree murder in the first, they stalemated between finding him guilty of manslaughter or acquitting him. (That jury acquitted Batten of using a firearm while committing murder, though they convicted him of three other gun charges).
At last week’s retrial, Batten faced only the manslaughter charge.
Batten, a former Warwick student, testified that he “thought it was going to be a fun night” when he went with a friend to the basketball game.
Text messages showed that Dunham — a standout football player at Woodside — and several other students were angry with Batten about an Instagram post that they interpreted as mocking of their gang, the “Playboy Bunnies.”
“We really about to do (him) tomorrow,” Dunham texted another student the night before the game, the evidence showed.
Other texts indicated that Dunham and his friends were watching Batten’s movements in the crowd. Batten testified that he got a message from a friend during the game that the other students were watching him.
Batten said he left the game with about two minutes left to avoid issues with the other group. He walked to his friend’s parked car, where he had a handgun on the floorboard.
As Batten waited outside the car, one of the students who had a beef with him approached.
Batten said he got into the car’s passenger side and tried to close the door, but that the other student held it open, punched him in the face and tried to grab his gun. But Batten said he picked up the gun, with the barrel pointed to the driver’s side.
Just then, he said, a student in a ski mask — Dunham — opened the driver’s side. Batten said Dunham leaned into the car and tried to grab at the gun. Batten said he closed his eyes and fired, saying he just wanted the other teens to get away.
Dunham was struck once in the chest.
Prosecutors Mary Button and Jennifer Titter asserted at the 2022 trial that Batten overreacted to the threat — that it was his choice to illegally bring a gun to school grounds and used it in what amounted to a fistfight. They contended that it was unlikely Batten would not have been subjected to a severe beating with police and many others around.
But Batten’s attorney asserted that he was trapped with nowhere to go.
Batten was found guilty at the October 2022 trial with possessing a firearm on school property, shooting a firearm on school property, and carrying in public a loaded semi-automatic pistol with a magazine holding more than 20 rounds. Those three charges still stand — and carry a maximum term of 16 years behind bars combined. That’s more than the 10-year maximum for manslaughter.
A trial date for those charges hasn’t been set; Batten remains in the Newport News City Jail.