The Richmond Times Dispatch reports:

A Richmond city councilman’s nephew is being held without bond today in the malicious wounding of a Virginia Union University student early Sunday.

Jamir Lee Jewell, whose uncle is Councilman E. Martin Jewell, was arrested Sunday about 1:15 a.m. — minutes after a student was shot in front of Newman Hall, an all-female dormitory on the northern edge of campus near Brook and Graham roads. Jamir Jewell is not a VUU student.

University police confirmed yesterday that the shooting occurred as they tried to deal with a crowd that had grown to as many as three dozen people.

“I really have to hand the credit to our people for the way they reacted,” VUU Police Chief David Horace said, noting that one officer stationed in a guard shack about 30 yards from Newman Hall called for reinforcements as the crowd grew more unruly. “It could have been much worse,” the chief said.

At least a half-dozen students have been shot or stabbed on or near the VUU campus in the past decade, according to news reports. The school has sought for years to control access to the campus, especially from nearby neighborhoods with histories of violence. A fence encircling the campus is under construction.

Campuswide alerts were not sent to the university community until nearly an hour after the shooting.

Two of the three school officers responding to the crowd are not authorized to carry weapons, Horace said.

Jewell, 21, could receive up to 23 years in prison if convicted on a malicious-wounding charge and an accompanying firearms charge. He made a brief appearance yesterday in Richmond General District Court and said he will retain his own attorney. A hearing was set for Sept. 11.

VUU officials declined to release the identity of the student who suffered three gunshot wounds to his left leg. He was expected to be released from the hospital shortly.

Martin Jewell said the news of the arrest of his sister’s son was a shock to him, but he declined any further comment. His nephew lives in the 800 block of West Lancaster Road, a few blocks from the university.

As usual, I am usually the last person in the neighborhood to hear about things. The following I heard second-hand and only parts of….

The story begins in the alley behind the 600 blocks of Laurel and Cherry. It forms a ‘T’ with entrances on Laurel, Cherry, and Holly, but not China. For a long time after the old cobblestones were taken out, it was an increasingly hazardous, gravel-but-mostly-dirt alley.
It was eventually paved, which lead to more people speeding through it.

Citizens begged for some signage or speed bumps, but the City said it was an alley and not a street and therefore would not get additional signage. I found some novelty/party ‘stop’ and ‘yield’ signs at a thrift store and put those up on the utility poles, but then they were taken down when the power grid was worked on. Speeders go up the alley and skid on the brakes when they realize it does not go all the way through to China Street.

Anyway, sometime last week some young men in a mini-van were speeding up the alley and failed to brake. When my neighbor became incensed at yet another invasion of his backyard, the mini-van pilots panicked and drove between houses. Somehow they drove over an embankment that ended in a three and a half foot drop after a brick retaining wall on the front sidewalk on China Street. In the process they damaged the wall as can be seen in this picture:

I am not clear on what happened after that. I would love to hear some more details. I do know the alley now has a real stop sign. I am guessing the City put it in, or my neighbors “requisitioned” it.