Out to Catch Comp Fraudster, PI Finds Murderer Instead

Tuesday, March 28, 2017 | 0

A private investigator working for a workers' compensation carrier captured video of a murder while looking for evidence that a worker was faking his claim last year, Newport News newspaper The Daily Press reported. 

Laratio Dantzler
(police photo)

Jason Gilliam had positioned himself near Wickham Avenue and 14th Street on Jan. 14, 2016, in hopes of capturing footage that would prove a shipyard worker had fudged his workers' compensation claim. 

Instead, he saw a gun-toting man — later revealed to be Laratio Lorenzo Dantzler, 34 — fire 13 rounds into a van, killing two men inside. Gilliam recorded the whole thing from his work vehicle. 

Gilliam began recording after hearing a commotion down the street, which turned out to be a minivan crashing into a parked pickup. He trained his camera on the scene as two men held another man at gunpoint outside the crashed minivan in an apparent robbery. After one robber left, the other — later determined to be Dantzler — leaned into the van and appeared to shoot into it.

When police officers arrived on the scene, Gilliam told them, "I have the whole thing on tape."

Dantzler was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder earlier this month for the killings of Ca'dre Antwoine Gray, 38, and Quinton Antonio Kelly, 30.