RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A man who was sentenced to serve 36 years in prison for the murder of a Virginia State Police special agent could get additional time in prison after being convicted in two prison assaults.
Travis Aaron Ball was convicted in the 2017 killing of special agent Michael Walter in Richmond’s Mosby Court public housing complex.
Ball’s convictions for the prison attacks have drawn the attention of Richmond prosecutors, who have filed a motion seeking to revoke the suspended life sentence Ball received in Walter’s murder, The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. A hearing is scheduled for March 10.
When Ball was sentenced in 2018 for Walter’s killing, a judge imposed a life sentence, but suspended all but 36 years of that time.
Prosecutors had sought a 60-year term, the maximum allowed under a plea deal that guaranteed that Ball would be convicted of a capital crime, which is typically punishable by death or life in prison.
As a condition of his suspended life sentence, Ball, now 33, was ordered to “keep the peace and be of good behavior” and not violate any other state laws.
About 12 months into his sentence, Ball stabbed and seriously injured another inmate with a shank. Then in April 2022, Ball joined another inmate at the Rappahannock Regional Jail in beating and choking a third inmate over an insult about a gang affiliation.
The five-year sentence Ball received for the first attack will be served concurrently with the sentence he received for killing Walter. In the second attack, prosecutors succeeded in adding 15 years to Ball’s existing term.
In addition, a federal judge in 2020 sentenced Ball to a 10-year consecutive sentence on his conviction for possessing the .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol he used to fatally shoot Walter.