Family of Rolin Hill Files $25 Million Wrongful Death Suit Over Virginia Beach In-Custody Death
Price Benowitz, with co-counsel Ben Crump, filed a $25 million wrongful death suit for the father of Rolin Hill, who died in 2024 after Virginia Beach jail deputies restrained and beat him during a mental health crisis.
What happened
On June 4, 2024, Rolin Hill was arrested at a Virginia Beach 7-Eleven after a report that he was trespassing. According to the lawsuit his family later filed, Hill was in the middle of a mental health crisis. The 911 call was never routed to the region's 988 crisis line, and no Crisis Intervention Team was dispatched. Instead, he was taken into custody.
At the Virginia Beach Correctional Center, deputies placed Hill in a WRAP restraint device. While he was already bound, the suit alleges, deputies punched, kicked, and kneed him. When the situation worsened, the complaint says the deputies did not know how to remove the wrap. Hill was left naked and unresponsive on the floor for roughly six minutes before anyone moved him toward medical care.
He was taken to Sentara Princess Anne Hospital and died on June 10, 2024. The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide, attributing it to positional and mechanical asphyxia from restraint with neck and torso compression. Three former deputies, Eric Baptiste, Michael Kidd, and Kevin Wilson, were later charged with second-degree murder.
On May 29, 2026, Hill's father, Stanley Hill, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Virginia Beach Circuit Court. He is represented by Kenneth LaDuca and Kenneth Koppelman of Price Benowitz, Accident Injury Lawyers, LLP, with civil rights attorney Ben Crump serving as co-counsel. The complaint seeks $25 million in compensatory damages plus punitive damages.
The suit names the Virginia Beach Sheriff's Office, Sheriff Rocky Holcomb, the city's Emergency Communications and Citizens Services, the Police Department, Police Chief Paul Neudigate, and the three charged deputies. It frames Hill's death as the product of systemwide failures: dispatchers who did not route the call to the crisis center, officers who were never told a mental health response was needed, and jail staff who treated a man in crisis as a combative inmate.
The case is at an early stage. The deputies' criminal trials are scheduled across late 2026 and early 2027, with Baptiste's trial set for September 28, 2026. The civil claim filed by the firm remains pending.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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