A four-day trial is now scheduled for early next year in the criminal case of a James City County police officer accused of shooting his superior officer.
Michael Trenton Rusk, 26, is charged with aggravated malicious wounding and a firearms charge in the shooting of Sgt. Christopher Gibson in the early morning hours of Jan. 25, 2023. Security camera footage shows Rusk and Gibson drinking together at a table in Brickhouse Tavern — a pub on Scotland Street — before eventually moving outside, where they began arguing in a parking lot.
Both were off-duty at the time.
Rusk contends Gibson, now 40, was coming on to him that night — and that he shot the sergeant in fending off the unwanted advances. During a 911 call reporting the shooting, Rusk tells a dispatcher: “I told him to stop, but he kept going, and that he “thought he was going to … rape me.”
The jury trial is set to run from April 15 through April 18, according to the docket at Williamsburg-James City County Circuit Court. This is the third time a trial date has been set in the case — with the case delayed in January and again this month.
Aggravated malicious wounding is a Class 2 felony — punishable between 20 years and life in prison — while the gun charge carries another three years.
Williamsburg-James City County’s top prosecutor, Commonwealth’s Attorney Nate Green, and Rusk’s lawyer, William Peyton Akers, did not return calls for comment.
Separately, Rusk is suing James City County and its police department in federal court, asserting that he was subjected to numerous sexual advances from Gibson over the course of many months.
Rusk, asking for more than $5.5 million in damages, contends the department and county discriminated against him on the basis of sex by allowing the abuses to continue.
“The Defendants’ conduct has completely ruined Mr. Rusk’s life,” the lawsuit asserts, saying the county jailed Rusk — and then fired him — rather than stopping the abuse.
Both officers were placed on administrative leave after the shooting, and both left the department this year. Rusk was fired and Gibson retired in May 2024.
The federal lawsuit contends that from December 2021 to January 2023, Gibson increasingly made unwelcome sexual advances, to include hand holding, touching, sexual comments. Rusk also contends that Gibson began to stalk him, showing up unannounced at various locations while the officers were on and off duty.
Hundreds of text messages were submitted as evidence to the complaint, Gibson initiating most of the text messages, and Rusk often responding. Rusk contends that his sergeant’s supervisory role — and the dependence on him for advancement opportunities — caused him to “fall prey to Gibson’s grooming tactics.”
Peter Dujardin, 757-897-2062, pdujardin@dailypress.com
