A Suffolk man accused of trying to steal a dog box from a retired police officer’s yard turned himself in on the charges Monday.

A grand jury indicted Quamaine Lassiter last month on a felony charge of grand larceny and a misdemeanor charge of entering property with intent to damage. Police believe Lassiter is the man whom retired officer Charles A. Duck shot at in his yard.

Suffolk NAACP president Lue Ward said Lassiter’s mother reached out to him for help because she was fearful Lassiter would get hurt trying to run from police.

“His mother was real concerned about that,” Ward said.

NAACP vice president Clinton Jenkins said he and Ward talked with Lassiter and advised him to contact an attorney and turn himself in.

“The best thing to do was turn himself in,” Jenkins said. “We told him he needed to contact an attorney. That was the extent of what we could do.”

Ward and Jenkins accompanied Lassiter to the police station Monday. They said their concern was not for whether Lassiter is guilty or innocent, but rather that “he did what was right in the eyes of the law” by turning himself in.

Police say that just before 3 a.m. on Jan. 13, Duck was awakened by the sound of his dog barking at his Whitemarsh Road home. He looked outside and saw a man attempting to load a dog transport crate from his yard into the back of a pickup truck.

Duck retrieved a gun and yelled at the man through the window to move to the front of his vehicle. The man in the yard jumped into his truck through the passenger door, while Duck fired several shots at the vehicle.

One bullet lodged under Lassiter’s scalp. Doctors have advised against removing it, so it cannot be compared with Duck’s gun. The suspect’s truck, with bullet holes in it, was found in front of Lassiter’s girlfriend’s house.

During investigation of the incident, Lassiter denied he was in Duck’s front yard, telling police instead he was shot by a passing vehicle as the walked along Lake Kennedy Drive.

Commonwealth’s Attorney C. Phillips Ferguson declined to press any charges against Duck for the shooting.