NEWPORT NEWS - Just after 11:30 p.m. on June 15, 2022, a masked man burst into a 7-Eleven gas station convenience store on Kiln Creek Parkway in Newport News.

Store owner Prayas Patel, 52, and one of his employees, Logan Edward Thomas, 35, were shot to death. The robber fled with lottery tickets.

The Newport News Police Department released surveillance footage from inside the store about a week later. The case went unsolved for more than four years, as police and the FBI worked to learn the identity of the masked man.

Now a 24-year-old man has been charged in the double killing. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Newport News announced Wednesday that Jordan Isaiah Pierce, most recently of Williamsburg, has been charged with two counts of using a firearm in a crime of violence resulting in death.

That crime is a capital offense under federal law, carrying the possibility of the death penalty if convicted. U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche would have the final say on whether a death penalty prosecution is pursued.

Pierce, who was 20 at the time of the killings, acted with a co-conspirator during the robbery, the federal indictment alleges. That person has so far not been identified in court documents.

Pierce was already in federal custody in a separate Newport News armed robbery that occurred in July 2022, about a month after the Kiln Creek double killing.

He also faces charges of robbery conspiracy, two counts of interstate commerce by robbery, and using a gun in a violent crime.

Kiln Creek is a large subdivision that straddles the Newport News and York County line, off Jefferson Avenue, not far from the Newport News airport. The 7-Eleven is at Fairway Plaza, a small but busy strip that includes dental offices and a dry cleaner.

Police said at the time that a customer walked into the 7-Eleven just before 11:46 p.m., didn't see anybody working, and called 911. Officers found Patel and Thomas in a walk-in cooler.

The surveillance footage, released by police about a week later, showed a masked man walking into the store with a Draco pistol. That's a semi-automatic weapon that an FBI aff
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