Arrest made in Lee murder
Published 10:56 pm Friday, January 22, 2010
Norfolk police have made an arrest in the Jan. 9 murder of Lakeland High School senior Michael Lee, according to police reports.
Clifton Erving Privott, 18, of Bangor Crescent in Chesapeake, was arrested at his home without incident Thursday morning, Officer Chris Amos, a Norfolk police spokesman, said Friday afternoon.
Privott has been charged with murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. He is being held at the Norfolk City Jail.
Lee, 17, was shot once with a handgun just after midnight Jan. 9 outside a home in Norfolk’s Park Place neighborhood after an altercation between partygoers at the home spilled into the yard, according to police reports about the original incident.
Amos said Friday that police do not believe Lee and Privott knew each other before the party, and they do not anticipate making any other arrests in connection with the shooting. However, the investigation continues, he said.
“We interviewed a lot of folks,” he said. “Sometimes that’s a blessing, and sometimes it’s a curse. The investigators have put a lot of legwork into tracking people down and conducting their investigation.”
Following a memorial service at Lakeland on Jan. 14, Lee’s mother, Karen, remembered her son as a young man who “always looked at the glass half full. It is my hope people will remember Mikey as a young man full of hope, joy and promise.”
“Mike was a young man who was going somewhere,” Lee’s guidance counselor, Shelia Williams, said at the time. “He overcame a lot of things in his childhood. But, instead of living a life of anger or fear, he lived life with determination and purpose.”