The third defendant in the 2024 in-custody killing of 34-year-old Rolin Hill won’t be tried until February 2027.
Kevin Wilson, a former Virginia Beach sheriff’s deputy, is charged with second-degree murder. Two other former deputies will face criminal trials beginning in September and December of this year.
According to a Virginia Beach spokesperson, the trials have been pushed back several months because a defense expert was unavailable during the trial dates previously scheduled for the first defendant, Eric Baptiste.
Baptiste was scheduled to go to trial this month, but his trial date was continued until Sep. 28. Due to the prosecution’s strategy, Baptiste will be tried first, so the trials for the other defendants, Michael Kidd and Wilson, were also postponed.
Baptiste faces multiple charges, including second-degree murder and five counts of assault and battery. Kidd faces a second-degree murder charge and two counts of assault and battery.
Hill was taken into custody on June 4, 2024, during a mental health crisis after the manager of a 7-Eleven pressed trespassing charges against him. He was taken to the Virginia Beach Correctional Center for booking, where he was placed in restraints.
Body camera footage released to the public of Hill’s booking shows Hill in a restraint wrap, laying face-down with his arms behind his back and several officers holding him down and punching him. He died six days later.
The medical examiner determined his cause and manner of death to be homicide by mechanical and positional asphyxia.
The defendants won’t be tried until more than two years after Hill’s killing. At a rally in May 2025, Hill’s family discussed the need for better mental health treatment in Virginia.
“Rolin is not here anymore,” said his father, Stanley Hill. “But what we’re trying to address is that we don’t want it to happen to anybody else. That’s the most important thing. The repetitive action that this continues to go on across the country needs to stop immediately.”
Emma Rose Brown, 757-805-2256, emma.brown@virginiamedia.com
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