DATE: Wednesday, March 12, 1997             TAG: 9703120424

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B7   EDITION: FINAL 

                                            LENGTH:   76 lines

COURTS & CRIME

The wife of a man who was found stabbed to death behind Oceanair Elementary School last April was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison.

Barbara Sipress, 47, was convicted by a jury of voluntary manslaughter for the death of her husband, Fredrick Sipress. She was arrested April 2, one day after police discovered her husband's body behind the school.

Fredrick Sipress, 55, worked for the Norfolk water department. He was found in the 600 block of Warwick Ave.

The couple lived in the 400 block of Warwick Ave.

Police said Barbara Sipress originally told them she was concerned about her husband because he had not returned home after going out a few nights before. She said she went out looking for him and found his body.

She told police she and her husband had had an argument shortly before his death. Man admits he's guilty of fatal January stabbing

James Lee Fisher pleaded guilty Tuesday in the stabbing of Jetson G. Jones in January 1996.

Fisher, 44, was charged in the death of Jones in a Park Place apartment in the 800 block of 36th St. where the two men lived.

Jones, 39, a shipping clerk, was pronounced dead at the scene. Fisher was arrested in Exmore on the Eastern Shore about a week after the slaying. His sentencing is scheduled for May 8. PORTSMOUTH Teen-ager is arrested after standoff with police

A 19-year-old man was arrested early Tuesday morning after a 4 1/2-hour standoff with the police department's tactical response unit.

According to Detective Amber Whittaker, public information officer, police officers responded shortly before 11 p.m. Monday after receiving reports of an individual firing shots inside and outside a duplex on Linden Avenue in Park View.

The suspect barricaded himself inside the duplex, and police tried to make contact with the man by phone and bullhorn numerous times, Whittaker said.

``To our knowledge, no shots were ever fired at any of the police officers,'' she said.

About 3:30 a.m., the suspect finally spoke to police by phone and was taken into custody, she said.

Antoine Demetrius Faulcon of the 100 block of Linden Ave. was charged with shooting within an occupied dwelling. He was released on $5,000 bond later Tuesday. CHESAPEAKE Mother gets suspended sentence for abuse, neglect

The mother who left her 2-year-old child alone on the day the girl's stepfather beat her to death was sentenced to a suspended term on Tuesday.

Circuit Court Judge Judge Russell I. Townsend Jr. sentenced Sisha T. Harris to 12 months in jail suspended - based on time already served - on a charge of misdemeanor child abuse and neglect.

He also placed her on supervised probation for two years and ordered her to attend parenting classes and receive counseling.

Her probation officer also will monitor the health and safety of the child Harris conceived two months after her daughter, Asia N. Jenkins, died on Feb. 12, 1994.

Harris originally was charged with felony child abuse and neglect.

At one point in the police investigation, she was charged with murder, but that charge later was dropped.

Timothy Harris, the child's stepfather and Sisha Harris' husband, was convicted in September of second-degree murder and child abuse and neglect. He will be sentenced April 4. KEYWORDS: MANSLAUGHTER MURDER STANDOFF

CHILD ABUSE CHILD NEGLECT

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