RICHMOND, Va. -- Lucretia Anderson only has a few pictures from her daughter's graduation day and didn't get the chance to snap photos of her with her diploma. Because moments after Huguenot High School's commencement ceremony at the Altria Theater on June 6, gunfire erupted right outside.
“Something that should have been just a joyous celebration that we were really excited about feels like it was taken away from us," Anderson told CBS 6. "Our sense of safety has been taken away from this as a result as well."
Graduate Shawn Jackson and his stepfather Renzo Smith were shot and killed that day. Five others were shot and survived. A dozen more were injured in the aftermath, and many others like Anderson's family were left traumatized.
Images still linger, Anderson said, of her mother dropping to the ground, her partner covering her 4-year-old niece's body from gunshots, and her son lost in the crowd for 15 minutes.
“We have all suffered some form of PTSD as a result of the shooting," Anderson said. "You're not sure when the triggers are going to come. It was really difficult in the very beginning."
According to a search warrant affidavit filed in Richmond Circuit Court, police said the shooting was carried out over an "ongoing feud that Shawn Jackson had with several individuals" tied to a shooting in 2020 in which a person was killed by "associates of Jackson."
Following the shooting, some Richmond School Board members raised questions about Jackson's attendance at the graduation. Richmond Public Schools confirmed Jackson was a homebound student, meaning he was learning virtually and was not permitted at school-sponsored activities per the district's homebound policy.
According to an email from September 2022 obtained by CBS 6, a school employee said Jackson was homebound partly due to "the threat of neighborhood violence stemming from his association with another student that was involved in a crime." RPS said a threat assessment of Jackson's attendance at the ceremony was not conducted because there were "no reported safety concerns" at the time.
In July 2023, Superintendent Jason Kamras presented an internal investigation of the shooting to the school board, which identified gaps in homebound procedures and protocols. The internal report stated a school faculty member, acting as the designee of Huguenot's principal, was the one to approve Jackson's participation. The internal report also outlined the security and safety protocols that were in place the day of the shooting.
However, some school board members were not satisfied with Kamras' internal report, saying it lacked detail and conflicted with the information they had received. So, a majority of the board authorized the law firm Sands Anderson to complete a third-party investigation of the district's handling of matters leading up to and the day of the shooting.
Sands Anderson delivered its report to the school board and superintendent behind closed doors on November 6.
On November 20, a majority of the school board voted not to release the report to the public.
“My family deserves to have this information. I believe all the families who were impacted by this event deserve to have this information, and I think it is devastating to have an entity that seeks to prevent us from having that at this time," Anderson said.
Board member Jonathan Young introduced a motion during the most recent school board meeting to release the report. His motion was seconded by board member Kenya Gibson. They were the only two people on the nine-member board to support the measure.
Gibson and Young argued releasing the report would enhance transparency to the public, increase accountability of the district, and give answers to those impacted by the tragedy.
"I cannot in good conscience keep something private to protect folks in City Hall when so much is at stake," Gibson said during the meeting.
But six other board members including Liz Doerr, Mariah White, Stephanie Rizzi, Cheryl Burke, Dawn Page, and Nicole Jones voted against releasing the report. They said doing so could open the district up to litigation, impact the ongoing criminal case, and would go against the advice of their legal counsel.
Board member Dr. Shonda Harris-Muhammed abstained from voting.
"I'm not willing to put us or compromise the integrity of this process, opening up ourselves for litigation," Board member Dawn Page said. "What's the purpose of paying money for legal to provide us advice when we are not willing to adhere to their perspective on certain legal issues?"
The school board's attorney warned the body that releasing the report would have "legal ramifications as well as insurance coverage issues."
The district's insurance company VAcorp was present at Monday night's meeting to brief the board in closed session regarding the release of the report.
"I don't feel that as a board member, I need to be forced to vote on something that I partially agree and don't agree [with] and I would like to hear what the attorney has to say. I believe in transparency for families, whoever needs that transparency, but to be forced to vote with not knowing the other part, I cannot agree with this," Board member Mariah White said.
CBS 6 submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to Richmond Public Schools (RPS) for a copy of the report.
In response, RPS chose to withhold the report in its entirety, saying it was exempt from mandatory disclosure under a state code that protects attorney-client privilege.
"Because you have commissioned this report, this external investigation... people are going to expect something to come out of it. And as soon as you start saying, 'no, you can't see any of it,' suspicions are going to be raised," said Megan Rhyne, a FOIA expert with the Virginia Coalition for Open Government.
Rhyne said the attorney-client privilege exemption is supposed to protect a public body's free flow of communication with an attorney as it relates to actual or probable litigation, as well as other specific legal matters.
She said the exemption should not be broadly applied to any record involving a lawyer just because of the fact that a lawyer is involved.
Rhyne pointed to the latest Virginia Supreme Court ruling on the attorney-client privilege issue, Bergano V. City of Virginia Beach, where the court determined the government used redactions that "were too broad and included items that are not shielded from disclosure by the attorney-client or work-product exceptions."
CBS 6 also requested an opinion from Alan Gernhardt, executive director of the Virginia FOIA Council, and while he did not specifically comment on the RPS report, he pointed to the same Supreme Court decision.
"As you will see in the case, the privilege does not cover every communication with an attorney, but generally refers to matters of legal advice, litigation strategy, and related issues," Gernhardt said. "Unfortunately, only a court has the authority to compel production of records under seal and to make binding determinations on disputed facts, so only a court can rule on whether specific records were withheld properly in accordance with what is allowed under the exemption for attorney-client privilege.
During Monday's board meeting, Gibson said the school board did not request legal advice when it approved the motion to launch a third-party investigation. Rather, the motion called on a third-party to "present findings."
"We procured an audit. We did not procure legal representation on this matter. So, I don't see necessarily how this is protected by client-attorney privilege. It was not mandated that an attorney procure or fulfill the request of the body," Gibson said.
Rhyne said more and more public bodies have used the attorney-client privilege to withhold external reports, including UVA's decision to withhold its report of the November 2022 campus shooting and the Loudoun County School Board's decision to withhold its report of the district 's handling of sexual assaults in 2021. A judge later ordered the Loudoun County School Board to publicly release its report.
"The whole point of an investigatory report... is to establish the timeline and what happened and who knew what at what point, maybe make recommendations too, but there's a lot of stuff in that continuum that's not going to be subject to any kind of exemption, and they could release that kind of thing," Rhyne said.
Even when exemptions apply, Rhyne said public bodies have a duty to redact specific information, not withhold records entirely.
“There's just very little to support that an entire report, an entire investigation would be exempt under any one exemption," Rhyne said.
CBS 6 legal analyst and defense attorney Todd Stone said he understood concerns about how releasing information could impact the ongoing criminal case.
He said certain information may taint a jury pool or affect the defendant's right to a fair trial.
“I can understand a delay until after the criminal case is over, because it could adversely impact the criminal case. But I don't know why it wouldn't be released after that," Stone said.
Stone added that if jurors knew about information that wasn't part of the criminal investigation, it could lead to a mistrial.
"It's a very narrow scope of admissible, relevant evidence that comes into a criminal trial. It doesn't matter what Richmond Public Schools' protocols were, whether they followed the protocols, whether they were negligent. That stuff doesn't matter in a criminal case, and it can muddy up the waters," Stone said.
However, Stone said that information could become relevant in potential civil cases.
A trial for Amari Pollard, the suspect charged in the shooting death of Shawn Jackson, is set for February 26.
While Pollard has been charged in connection with allegedly shooting Jackson, there have been no other suspects charged in the death of Renzo Smith or the other victims who were shot and survived. Richmond Police have also refused to answer to whom two of the guns recovered from the scene belonged.
While Anderson continues to cope with the trauma from June 6, she called on school board members to reconsider their vote.
"Part of the healing process for us is to have some type of closure, to have some information and to be able to act upon that information if we so choose to," Anderson said. "I believe that an executive summary of some sort, if nothing else, should be released to the public as soon as possible so... we can get some clarity around what some next action steps might be for us as community members, so that we can continue to hold our elected officials, our school board, and our school administration accountable."
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