Commonwealth's Attorney

A Hampton man was sentenced to life in prison, plus five years for firearms charges, for murdering his ex-girlfriend, just one of several crimes of domestic violence he committed.

In pronouncing her sentence, Judge Tyneka Flythe noted the defendant’s significant criminal history and multiple prior charges for domestic violence and the fact that, several months after the defendant murdered Nekaybaw Scott, and before he was arrested, he brutally assaulted another woman in Hampton and broke her orbital socket. That case is still pending in the Hampton Circuit Court. 

A jury found Adjascent White guilty of first-degree murder and two firearms charges in June after hearing testimony that Ms. Scott’s grandmother and mother went to Ms. Scott’s apartment on Feb. 7, 2023, because Ms. Scott was not responding to their calls and messages. The young woman’s family found her dead in a pool of blood just outside the door of her apartment in southeast Newport News.

 Inside, the apartment was in disarray and there was blood spatter that was not present when Ms. Scott’s family had visited several days before. Ms. Scott had scrapes, bruises, and lacerations to her head and face, and she had been shot with a .38 caliber bullet entering her left shoulder, damaging her lungs and killing her.

 A downstairs neighbor testified that he often heard arguing from Ms. Scott’s apartment and, on Feb. 6, 2023, he heard a female voice yell “stop hitting me” several times and then two gunshots.

White, 26, previously had been accused of abusing and assaulting Ms. Scott. When police confronted White about Ms. Scott’s death, he claimed he had not been at the apartment in three weeks. But officers tracked his cell phone location around the time of murder and found his phone was in the area on Feb. 6 and 7, 2023.

White hid his hand from officers during the Feb. 8, 2023 interview but they eventually saw his middle finger was covered in two bandages and there was a wound on his index finger. He claimed the injuries came from a vehicle repair. The Department of Forensic Science determined that the blood spatter found in the apartment was White’s. Forensic scientists also found White’s DNA under Ms. Scott’s fingernails.

After police arrested White, they seized his phone and found he had searched the victim’s name, “woman shot in Newport News,” “can you die from a getting a gun shot to the shoulder”, whether there were cameras in the area of the victim’s apartment, how long his phone company kept phone records, could investigators trace a bullet without a gun, “what happens when a person dies,” and whether the police could obtain someone’s phone records.

White testified during the trial and, for the first time, claimed the two had fought and that he shot Ms. Scott after she allegedly tried to stab him. A small kitchen knife was found under Ms. Scott’s body.