A man was shot on Jouett Street in Portsmouth on Wednesday evening, and police still have not identified a suspect or released his condition. Officers were called to the 10 block of Jouett Street around 7:04 p.m. after receiving a report of a shooting, and found the victim suffering from a gunshot wound before he was taken to the hospital.
According to 13News Now, Portsmouth police have not shared the man's current condition, nor have they provided any information about a possible suspect. The department says it is continuing to investigate the incident, though no further details have been made public. Jouett Street sits within the 23702 ZIP code, near the Victory Boulevard corridor in the southern part of the city, according to street registry data from Geographic.org.
The shooting comes just two days after Hoodline reported on four people wounded in a separate shooting on London Boulevard, underscoring a stretch of violent incidents that has kept Portsmouth police busy this month. Earlier in October, officers were also investigating an armed robbery at a Cradock convenience store and a case involving a man accused of axing his neighbor and burning the body in a backyard.
City Programs Target Gun Violence as a Public Health Issue
Portsmouth leaders have been working to address gun violence through structural changes rather than just case-by-case policing. In August, the Portsmouth City Council unanimously approved Project IMPACT, a public health initiative that treats gun violence as an emergency, deploying a 24/7 unified incident command along with rapid 24-to-72-hour on-site community response teams after major shootings, as recorded by Citizen Portal. The strategy pairs multidisciplinary intervention with physical fixes like lighting repairs and blight removal in affected neighborhoods.
That effort follows crime data presented to City Council in April showing some improvement: first-quarter homicides in Portsmouth dropped 25% and aggravated assaults fell roughly 14% compared to the same period in 2025. Police noted at the time that the aggravated assault category includes severe shootings and stabbings resulting in injury, suggesting that while fewer people are being killed or seriously hurt citywide, incidents like the one on Jouett Street remain an ongoing concern for investigators.
What Charges Could Follow if a Suspect Is Identified
No suspect has been named in the Jouett Street shooting, but Virginia law lays out steep penalties for anyone eventually charged. Under Virginia Code § 18.2-51, maliciously shooting or wounding a person with intent to maim, disfigure, disable, or kill is a Class 3 felony carrying five to 20 years in prison and fines up to $100,000. If a firearm is used in committing that violent felony, Virginia Code § 18.2-53.1 adds a mandatory minimum three-year sentence for a first conviction, which must run consecutively and cannot be suspended by a judge. Potential charges in a case like this would depend on the circumstances.
The department, now led by Colonel Stephen Jenkins, Portsmouth's 24th Chief of Police, also maintains a public Crime & Gun Violence Dashboard tracking non-fatal and fatal gunshot wound incidents across the city.
Anyone with information about the Jouett Street shooting is urged to contact police. Police say the investigation remains active as they continue working to identify what led to the shooting and who was responsible.
