Fugitive Finally Caught After Three Years: Gets Another Year for Skipping Out on Sentencing

Fields Obryant McKnight, a 28-year-old former South Hill resident, pled guilty to Grand Larceny of $3,000 cash from a Victoria woman in 2012 in Lunenburg Circuit Court, but failed to show up for his sentencing about a month later. He stayed away for about two and a half years before being arrested on a new charge of Felony Failure to Appear.  He was sentenced recently to one year and ten months on the larceny charge and to an additional year for the Failure to Appear.

This incident arose when a 33-year-old single mother in Victoria learned the hard way that meeting men on the Internet can be costly. She invited McKnight into her home after meeting him on Facebook and talking with him for about a month on the phone.

According to Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Clement, the woman traveled to Henrico County and picked McKnight up in May 2012 and brought him back to Victoria to spend the night with her. The next morning she left the house briefly to take her children to her mother’s house just a few blocks away, and when she returned in about five minutes she found McKnight looking in her wardrobe where she had stored $5,800 in cash from her tax refund check.

She said nothing to him and then gave him a ride to a trailer park located on Lombardy Street in South Hill. When she returned home she looked in the wardrobe and found that $3,000 was missing. She called the police and they had her arrange another visit by the man since she had not made him aware that she knew about the theft.
About a week later, McKnight arrived in Victoria with some friends. Police were waiting for him. Victoria Police Officer Mark Arrington interviewed McKnight who admitted that he had been at the woman’s home with her, and that he was looking through the wardrobe and had seen the money, but denied taking it.

The suspended portion of McKnight’s sentence includes good behavior, supervised probation upon his release, restitution, warrantless searches and seizures, no contact and staying off the property of the victim, and staying out of Lunenburg County for five years upon his release.