COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA
Present: Judges Benton, Frank and Felton Argued at Chesapeake, Virginia

JASON ANDRE WILLIAMS MEMORANDUM OPINION * BY v. Record No. 0783-04-1 J UDGE JAMES W. BENTON, JR. MARCH 29, 2005 COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA

FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE CITY OF NEWPORT NEWS H. Vincent Conway, Jr., Judge (Theophlise L. Twitty; Jones & Twitty, on brief), for appellant. Appellant submitting on brief. Alice T. Armstrong, Assistant At torney General (Jerry W. Kilgore, Attorney General, on brief), for appellee.
The trial judge convicted Ja son Andre Williams of possessin g a firearm after previously having been convicted of a felony. Code § 18 .2-308.2. Williams argues police officers lacked reasonable suspicion to seize him because they acted solely upon an anonymous tip. He contends, therefore, that the trial judge er red by denying his motio n to suppress the evidence and that absent the evidence obtained from this se izure the record is insufficient to support the conviction. We affirm the judge’s rulings.
I. The evidence proved that at 1:45 a.m., the Newport News police dispat cher directed Officer Sonia Hale to the area of 3500 Marshall Avenue in response to a telephone ca ll, reporting that a man was shooting at a vehicle. The caller described the shoo ter as a young man we aring a gray hooded sweatshirt and faded blue jeans. Officer Hale test ified that she did not recall whether the dispatcher

* Pursuant to Code § 17.1-413, this opin ion is not designated for publication.- 2 - mentioned the race of the man. Officer Gray, who also heard the dispatch and went to investigate, testified that the description of the man indicated his race. As the dispatcher continued to relay information about the man, Officer Hale approached the corner of 35th Stre et and Marshall Avenue. Officer Hale testified that Marshall Avenue and the side streets were lit by streetlight s. There, she saw a man jogging with a hood over his h ead as if to shield his f ace. The man fi t the caller’s description and later was identifi ed as Jason Andre Williams. Williams looked toward Office r Hale’s vehicle, removed the hood from his head, and began to walk slowly. Officer Hale not ified two other officers of Willia ms’s location and informed them that Williams was the only person in that area. After Williams had traver sed one block, Officer Gray drove in front of Williams an d told him to stop an d put his hands on the car. Officer Hale drew her weapon and exited her vehicle. When the officers as ked Williams if he had any weapons, he said he did not. While Williams had his hands on th e car, Officer Gray fr isked him and found a gun tucked in the wais tband of Williams’s pant s under his jack et. The gun contained three cartridges. The officers then arrested Williams. As these events were occurring , the caller remained on the telephone with the dispatcher. While Officers Gray and Hale we re detaining Williams, Officer Morrissey went to the caller’s residence. The caller, an elderl y woman, told Officer Morrissey she reported the shooting. She also told Officer Morrissey she did not want to give her name and did not want to be involved. After Officer Hale arrested Williams and was taki ng him to her vehicle, Williams made statements about the gun. Origin ally, Williams said the gun was not his and sugges ted the officers had found the gun on the ground. Williams then said he had paid $1,200 for the gun and he is “proficient and . . . shoot[s] it every day.” In the vehicle, Williams told the officers they “might as well go check the woods or the grassy areas over there by the railroad tracks, because [he] shot some guy and [the person] mi ght be bleeding to death.”- 3 - Denying Williams’s motion to suppress, the trial judge found that the officers had reasonable suspicion to justif y detaining Williams fo r questioning an d that the officers were justified in frisking Williams for a gun because the report indicated a gun had be en fired. At the conclusion of all eviden ce, the judge convicted W illiams of possessing a fi rearm after previously having been convicted of a felony in violation of Code § 18.2-308.2.
II. Williams contends th at the police unlawfully seized him because they acted solely upon a report from an anonymous cal ler. He argues that this seizure wa s akin to the seizures condemned in cases such as Florida v. J.L. , 525 U.S. 266 (2000), and Harris v. Commonwealth , 262 Va. 407, 551 S.E.2d 606 (2001).
In J.L. , 529 U.S. 266, the United States Supreme Court succi nctly posed the issue raised by a “stop and frisk” based on an anonymous tip. “[W]here a police officer observe s unusual conduct which leads him reasonably to conclude in lightof his experience that criminal activity may be afoot and that the persons with whom he is dealing may be armed and presently dange rous, where in the course of investigating this behavior he id entifies himself as a policeman and makes reasonable inquiries, and wh ere nothing in the initial stages of the encounter serves to dispel his reasonable fear for his own or others’ safety, he is entitled for th e protection of hi mself and others in the area to conduct a carefully limited search of the outer clothing of such persons in an attempt to discover weapons which might be used to assault him.” In the instant case, the offi cers’ suspicion that [the accused] was carrying a weapon arose not from any observations of their own but solely from a call made from an unknown location by an unknown caller. Unlike a tip from a known informant whose reputation can be assessed and who can be held responsible if her allegations turn out to be fa bricated, “an anonymous tip alone seldom demonstrates the info rmant’s basis of knowledge or veracity.”- 4 - Id. at 269-70 (citations omitted). See also Harris , 262 Va. at 416-17, 551 S.E.2d at 611 (holding that a detention based solely upon an anonymous tip alleging criminal conduct was not supported by reasonable, articulable susp icion of criminal conduct). The application of these princi ples assumes, of course, that the telephone caller is “truly anonymous,” J.L. , 525 U.S. at 275 (Kennedy, J., joined by Reinquist, C.J., concurring), as was the circumstance existing in J.L. and Harris , and that, therefore, the tip lacked reliability. The record in this case establishes, however, that the telephone caller was not “truly anonymous” as that term is ordinarily understood. The police officers knew the precise lo cation of the caller’s residence. Indeed, one officer went to the calle r’s residence, saw the ca ller, and there personally talked to her. As Justice Kennedy not ed in his concurring opinion in J.L. , “[i]t seems appropriate to observe that a tip might be anonymous in some sense yet have certain other features, either supporting reliability or narrowing th e likely class of informants, so that the tip does provide the lawful basis for some police action.” J.L. , 525 U.S. at 275. This case bears a similarity in many respects to the circumstances we addressed in Reed v. Commonwealth , 36 Va. App. 260, 549 S.E.2d 616 (2001). There, the police dispatcher received a telephone call from a person who did not give a name. We analyzed the circumstances as follows: We do not have a wholly “anonymou s tipster” as that term is contemplated by the Supreme Court in J.L. . . . and the evidence partially corroborated the tipster’s report that a crime had occurred. The informant in this case was a disinterested citizen who had just witnessed a crime. The informant contacted the police dispatcher by way of his cellular phone, and while the record is silent as to whether the caller immediately provided his identity to the dispatcher, he stayed on the lin e as he followed appellant and provided the dispatcher with upda tes on the location of appellant and his companion. The caller also stayed in communication with the dispatcher as the dispatcher re layed his report to [the] Officer . . . and as [the] Officer . . . approached appellant. Id. at 268, 549 S.E.2d at 620.- 5 - We deemed the circumstances in Reed to be akin to Adams v. Williams , 407 U.S. 143 (1972), where the informant was not anonymous a nd the informant’s reliability was enhanced because “[t]he informant . . . came forward pers onally to give informa tion that was immediately verifiable at the scene.” Id. at 146. Indeed, we noted in Reed that “if the informer is a disinterested citizen who is either a victim of or eyewitness to, a crime, police properly may give more weight to the informer’s information than they would to information from a “criminal” informer, whose motives are less likely to be pure. 36 Va. App. at 267-68, 549 S.E.2d at 619-20. The record in this case similarly establishes that the police dispatcher and the investigating officers had objective reasons to believe the caller was reliable. As in Reed , the evidence proved the caller was an elderly person w ho was a “disinterested citizen” and an “eyewitness” to the events. 36 Va. App. at 267, 549 S.E.2d at 619-20. Sh e reported seeing a man shoot at a car and described the man in detail. The caller’s continued presence on the telephone as the encounter unfolded established her reliability. As Officer Hale testified, the call er was “providing . . . updated information at the time [the officers] actually approached [Williams ].” The officers corroborated the information she was providing. While the dispatcher was re laying information about the event and while the caller was on the telephone, the first police officer was in the vicinity and quickly arrived at the intersection where the caller said the shooting occurred. The officer immediately saw Williams jogging from the area of the reported shooting, and the officer saw no other person in the area. Williams tried to hide his face and then change d his run to a walk in an attempt to avoid detection. The evidence furthe r established that th e caller remained on th e telephone during the entire encounter between the officers and Williams. Dispelling any suggestion that the caller was anonymous, th e evidence proved that a police officer went to the caller’s residence and spoke with her while the officers were detaining- 6 - Williams. In view of the information the police knew about the caller and the officer’s personal contact with her, the caller’s expressed de sire to remain unnamed does not render her anonymous. We hold that the totality of the circ umstances was sufficient for the trial judge to conclude the caller was reliable. Accordingly, the trial judge did not err in denying the motion to
suppress. We further hold that, in view of the proof that Williams possessed the gun and that he was a convicted felon, the evidence was su fficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the elements of Code § 18.2-308.2. Accordingly, we affirm the conviction. Affirmed.