Commonwealth v. Ramey

By Judge Jonathan M. Apgar

On August 21,1999, at approximately 2:09 p.m., Officer Vineyard of the Roanoke City Police Department received a transmission from police dispatch alerting officers to look for a vehicle with a white female driver and a black male passenger. In addition to a description of the occupants, the message contained a description of the car, its license plate, and the last known geographic location of the vehicle.

The dispatch warned that the vehicle contained a black male “involved” in a fatal shooting that had occurred approximately fourteen hours earlier that day. Before…