DATE: Saturday, November 1, 1997            TAG: 9711010727

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH                        LENGTH:   83 lines

2 RUNAWAYS SENTENCED IN ABDUCTION, CARJACKING TEENS WHO ESCAPED FROM THE PINES WILL SERVE SEVEN YEARS.

Two runaways from The Pines Residential Treatment Center were sentenced on Friday to serve seven years in prison for abducting a man and driving him around as a hostage in his own car for an hour.

Circuit Court Judge Johnny E. Morrison sentenced Anthony L. Braxton and David L. Brown, both 17-year-old youths from Maryland, to the minimum sentence of 15 years for carjacking, and five years each for abduction and robbery. The judge suspended 10 years on the carjacking charge, and allowed most of the prison time to be served concurrently.

Both will be on supervised probation following their release.

``Basically, I'm satisfied,'' said victim Ken Barbee, a 55-year-old Norfolk Naval Shipyard worker. ``I am, in the sense that these men are still young. It's just something I live with. I think about it pretty much all the time. I wouldn't want anybody else to go through it.''

In a victim statement submitted to the court, Barbee said he had lost his sense of security and no longer goes out at night, prosecutor Ronald G. Reel told the judge.

``He has nightmares about driving in a car with these men, wondering if they're going to kill him or not,'' Reel said. ``I'm asking you to . . . put them in the penitentiary where they can't terrorize anyone again. If they have the chance, they're going to do it again.''

The youths faced possible double life terms plus 10 years. A third co-defendant, Dominic D. Williamson, also from Maryland, is to be sentenced on Dec. 8.

In a handwritten letter on pink stationery, Brown asked the judge for leniency, saying: ``I want to go to school and do something in life. . . . All I want to do is enjoy my childhood and someday have a wife and kid. I don't want to go to prison. Please don't let me go. I learned my lesson.''

Standing before the judge, Braxton made a similar plea: ``I'm sorry. I had a whole lot of time to think about the crime. . . . I want to go on and finish my education.''

Defense attorneys for the two youths argued for them to be sentenced as juveniles and serve time in a juvenile correctional center instead of prison.

But Reel argued that the judge should go outside the recommended guidelines for adults and impose a harsher sentence.

``Mr. Barbee was victimized by both these men - not because they had a bad background or difficult childhoods, but because they saw a victim,'' Reel said. ``Mr. Barbee had to wonder if he was going to survive the night. . . . They've been given multiple chances by society, but they don't care about society. They do what they want and they don't care about anyone else's rights.''

The incident began late on Oct. 3, 1996, after the three youths ran away from The Pines about 7 p.m. while employees were distracted by a water leak in the laundry room, Pines officials have said. It is unclear whether the youths picked a lock or found a missing key, Pines officials have said.

The three youths were among more than 40 residents of The Pines, a residential treatment center for troubled youths, who ran away from the facility last year. In 1995, residents ran away from The Pines at the rate of nearly one every five days. In 1996, that number dropped to about one every eight days.

At the trial in May, Barbee testified that when he got home from work about midnight, the three youths confronted him in the parking lot of his apartment building.

Braxton, acting as if he had a gun concealed beneath his clothes, told Barbee to ``empty your pockets,'' Barbee testified.

Barbee threw down his keys and his wallet, which he said contained about $3 and credit cards. The youths fumbled with the keys, and Barbee said he helped them unlock the door to his Chevrolet Monte Carlo. They pushed him into the back seat.

In the minutes that followed, Barbee said, he begged them to let him go.

Finally, after about an hour of driving around, the three youths released Barbee in the middle of westbound Interstate 64.

Meanwhile, the youths continued on and crashed the car in Hampton after a brief police chase. Police were following them because the Monte Carlo matched the description of the getaway car in a convenience store theft minutes earlier, an officer testified during the trial.

Friday's sentencing does little to restore Barbee's sense of security, he said after the hearing. His 1987 Monte Carlo was just stolen again from outside his apartment, nearly a year to the day after the carjacking.

``Once this happens to you, you always look over your shoulder,'' he said.

Barbee said it was difficult to be in the same courtroom with the two youths for the sentencing.

``You can still remember word by word, minute by minute,'' he said. KEYWORDS: CARJACKING JUVENILE SENTENCE

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