ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, November 8, 1996 TAG: 9611080093
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: HILLSVILLE
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
A three-day sentencing hearing has been scheduled for two Carroll County half-brothers in the murder of their father and wounding of their stepmother.
William Spencer "Willie" Gammon, 22, has waived his right to a jury trial and pleaded no contest to charges of first-degree murder and principal in the second degree to aggravated malicious wounding.
Chris Gammon, 18, who originally was scheduled for a sentencing hearing Thursday, has also pleaded no contest to a first-degree murder charge.
The pleas allowed them to avoid trial on the earlier capital murder charges in the Oct. 31, 1994, fatal shooting of Gary Gammon, 42, and wounding of Rebecca Easter Gammon, 30, who is partly paralyzed from the effects of several bullet wounds. The couple had been married in 1988.
Gary Gammon was hit by a bullet from an SKS semiautomatic rifle and a the rifle and his brother had a .25-caliber pistol when the the shootings occurred.
"I shot my father, and my brother shot my stepmother. I don't remember if I shot her or not. Everything happened so fast,'' Willie Gammon said in his statement, read during a preliminary hearing last March. The shooting happened as the couple entered their mobile home near Galax after returning from a trip to Martinsville.
The brothers later were arrested in Henry County after a high-speed police chase.
In his statement, Willie Gammon said his father had ordered him and Chris to move out of the mobile home. He said there was "bad blood" between him and his father over the breakup of Gary Gammon's marriage to Willie's mother. He also claimed Gary Gammon was armed when the shooting happened.
Rebecca Gammon, testifying from a wheelchair in the hearing last March, disputed that part of the statement. She said her husband was not armed, and the shootings happened immediately when she and her husband entered the darkened mobile home.
LENGTH: Short : 45 linesby CNB