VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — Brian Besecker, the 32-year-old man shot by Virginia Beach Police officers last Friday as they were responding to a dispute call, faces a list of charges — once he gets out of the hospital.
Officers responded to a dispute in progress, and it was a couple neighbors had heard from before.
Police shot Besecker when he opened the door while holding a gun, according to police reports.
Police dispatch noted what had happened at Besecker’s apartment.
“Two gunshot wounds…upper right chest…upper right arm.”
We met with a neighbor who lives directly above Besecker’s apartment.
“We could hear he and the woman all the time,” the upstairs neighbor said. “We could hear him say ‘I am not f******g coming out. You can’t make me.’ And then like three seconds later, you [hear], ‘Pop, pop, pop, pop. And that’s it.”
Another neighbor who lives next door to Besecker — who also did not want to be named — showed where an officer’s bullet grazed the wood, ending up in the wood on the other side of the door frame.
“I did not hear shots from two different sounding guns,” the next-door neighbor told 10 On Your Side. “I heard four shots from what sounded like the same gun.”
Both neighbors said disputes in the apartment can be heard all the time.
The next-door neighbor said the person he lives with said that “she had actually heard and spoken with the woman who lives there [in Besecker’s apartment], and she was told there was a history of his beating her.”
And the neighbor upstairs could hear them down below.
“Loud — you can hear them bickering all the time,” the upstairs neighbor said. “He was always saying ‘how come you won’t let me see the video?’ I don’t know what that means, you would hear that clearly, and then he was apparently beating the dog because we could hear him saying, don’t hit me…or my dog again. And then we heard the cops showing up.”
He said once Besecker was shot, Besecker asked police for help.
“I could hear him say, ‘I don’t care. Just help me out,'” the man said. “So then, like 10 minutes later, we saw him come up on like a little white bag on the stretcher.”
Police said that once the scene was stabilized, they provided life-saving measures until the Virginia Beach Fire Department and EMS arrived and took over.
The upstairs neighbor remembers Besecker as being mean.
“He was mean…not very nice. He was walking to his apartment one time with a cigarette, and I told him to put it out because we can smell the smoke up in our apartment,” the upstairs neighbor said. “You could smell weed and cigarettes, and we complained about it before to the apartment complex, but they didn’t do anything about it…but he was walking one time, and I said Hey, can you put out the cigarette, and he goes “No, I’m not doing that.”
The officers who were involved have been placed on administrative leave pending outcome of investigations, which is standard for incidents that occur like this.
We also went to Besecker’s parents’ home, but they didn’t answer the door, and then another family member hung up when 10 On Your Side contacted her by phone.
Police said the gun Besecker was holding was recovered at the scene.
He has bench charged with three counts of assault on a law enforcement officer and one count on domestic assault. Additional charges stemming from this incident are expected, according to police.