County Board members are asking for residents’ patience as authorities continue an investigation into a fatal police shooting on Columbia Pike in May.
Board Chair Matt de Ferranti responded to a petition drive launched for information and dialogue around the death of 33-year-old Shawn Valn, who was shot and killed by Arlington officers after barricading himself in a 7-Eleven store at 3602 Columbia Pike.
At the Board’s Saturday meeting, de Ferranti and other leaders said they will only feel comfortable addressing community concerns after the office of the commonwealth’s attorney completes its investigation and determines next steps.
“We want to provide information, [but] do not believe it is appropriate before that investigation for us to be saying anything in detail,” Board Chair Matt de Ferranti said.
Investigation of the May 8 incident was turned over to the Northern Virginia Critical Incident Response Team, a multi-jurisdictional task force that uses out-of-locality police personnel to conduct investigations involving local police.
Arlington is among signatories to the 2021 regional pact. Results of investigations are turned over to the commonwealth’s attorney in the appropriate jurisdictions.
At the July 18 Board meeting, the petition for action was presented by local resident Pamela Pinnock. She expressed concern that new information on the matter has dried up.
“Transparency is not a threat to public safety — it is the foundation of public trust,” Pinnock said, calling for “a full, public accounting” of the incident.
Like de Ferranti, Board member Maureen Coffey said that would occur, but procedural steps needed to be taken in the correct order.
“A lot of this is out of our hands,” Coffey said. “We really are waiting, in some ways, as much as the community is.”
She asked for patience as the investigations continue.
“This is going to take some time,” Coffey said.
County Board member Takis Karantonis said, “We need to sit down with the community and have a very honest discussion.”
De Ferranti said it is not the place of elected officials to insert themselves into investigations that are the responsibility of Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti.
“Influencing what she concludes in her criminal investigation is not something that this Board at all, in my view, in our view, should be involved in,” he said.
While use of deadly force may prove justified in some cases, “every death of this type is an avoidable tragedy,” Karantonis said.
According to police, officers were dispatched to the convenience store at the corner of Columbia Pike and S. Monroe Street for a report of a man harassing a woman. After a first interaction with officers, Valn retreated into the store and locked himself in a storage room, police said.
According to police, Valn displayed a knife after officers entered the barricaded room following a nearly three-hour standoff. Two officers discharged firearms, fatally striking Valn, police said.
Residents have described Valn, who was homeless, as a well-known figure around Columbia Pike, identifiable by the reflective vest and pants that he typically wore as he sat on benches along Lincoln Street and slept in the parking lot across from the Gilliam Place apartment building.
Pinnock contended the event was part of what she termed a troubling trend.
“There seems to be an unhealthy us-vs.-them dynamic that has developed and been normalized” within the police department, she said.
