Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 1, 1990 TAG: 9004010161
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE JACKSON and THOMAS HUANG LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: POWHATAN LENGTH: Long
It started 10 years ago with youth gangs in Ocean View and ended with 10 days of robbery and murder in November 1988. Violence gave him a name, an identity. It gave him a sense of power, he said.
"When I'm fighting, all I can think about is beating the person," Sumrell said. "Winning. I just feel good winning. Having the power over someone else just makes me feel good."
Sumrell is a prime example of the kind of criminal that can be bred by Norfolk's increasingly dangerous youth gangs, police say. Investigators have identified 25 to 30 such gangs and have applied for a $74,000 federal grant to fight the problem.
In an interview last week at Powhatan Correctional Center, Sumrell spoke of his development as a man of violence, starting with an apprenticeship in the loose-knit youth gangs of Ocean View.
He is serving a life sentence for murder and dozens of other crimes associated with the 10-day terror spree.
The only remorse Sumrell feels now is that he cannot feel remorse for his victims, such as Daniel Barben, the 22-year-old convenience store clerk he killed. There was always a detachment he could not understand.
"People tell me I'm cold-blooded," said Sumrell, 24, an articulate high school dropout with shoulder-length blond hair and a tattoo on his arm of an eagle diving at a woman. "I don't think I am. I don't know what I am. I wish I knew.
"I should have feelings for the people I hurt . . . but the people are not there. They're not real. They're in the way, a threat. They could keep me from doing what I want."
And that was robbery and burglary.
On the night of Nov. 6, 1988, Sumrell and Jerry Wayne Johnson entered the Get It and Go convenience store at 2405 E. Ocean View Ave. Barben was talking on the phone with his girlfriend when Sumrell pulled a sawed-off shotgun from his jacket and shot him point-blank in the face. Johnson and Sumrell took the cash register and fled.
"It wasn't like he stood there, like in the cartoons, and grabbed his face and [said], `Oh my God,' " Sumrell said. "He was shot and hit the ground. I looked over the counter. The blood was just there."
On March 15, Sumrell was sentenced to life in prison for capital murder, first-degree murder and several counts of armed robbery.
After Barben's murder, Sumrell talked with gang member Robert Beveridge. The gang was staying in Johnson's apartment in the 9500 block of 5th Bay Street in East Ocean View. "I went into the bedroom and . . . said, `Damn, I just killed somebody,' " Sumrell recalled. "He said: `Don't sweat it, man. Everything's cool.' I said, `All right.' He put me at ease."
The story of Craig Sumrell is one of a mean streak grown deadly in the company of friends.
For 10 days in 1988, the Deathstalkers - Sumrell, Johnson, Beveridge and Walter Lawson - terrorized Ocean View. The four were later accused of robbing five people from Nov. 1 to Nov. 3, robbing and killing Barben on Nov. 6, and robbing and killing M. Bagher R. Khorrami, 35, a cab driver, on Nov. 9.
The four also were accused of conspiring to hold up a Johnstons Road bar on Nov. 10 and kill all the patrons inside. But the plot failed, and the four planned to leave for Florida, where Sumrell knew some bikers, he said.
They were arrested the next day, as they prepared to leave.
During his trial, Sumrell was diagnosed as having a "sociopathic personality" - a person incapable of caring about the consequences of his actions.
Sumrell traced his violent roots to 1980, when his parents divorced. Sumrell, then 14, moved from his father's house in Chesapeake to his mother's trailer park in East Ocean View.
Sumrell didn't like controls or discipline, even then. He started running with "a wilder crowd," he said. "It made me feel accepted. A lot of the kids came from split families. They were hustlers. They were out to make a quick dollar."
He started taking drugs and became a go-between in marijuana deals, he said. He learned which sailors to rob on Navy paydays. He, like his friends, "wanted to be better than the next person."
And Sumrell grew, ultimately reaching 6 feet 3 inches and 200 pounds. "I got big . . . and I had power," he said. "I wanted power. I'd hear people say, `Don't cross Craig, he'll beat your ass.' A lot of people knew me, a lot of people feared me. I liked it . . . I wanted to leave a mark."
Sumrell committed his first felony in January 1983 when he and two other Ocean View youth gang members robbed a sailor. He later told a court worker that "common sense" told him how to rob the man.
Sumrell was arrested and, on Aug. 12, 1983, sentenced to eight years in prison. He was paroled in 1986. For the next two years, he would be in and out of prison and jail for assaults, burglary and parole violations.
On Oct. 12, 1988, Sumrell was released on his own recognizance from Norfolk City Jail to seek treatment for hepatitis. By now he was a heavy drug user, injecting $600 to $800 a day in cocaine and heroin into his tattoos so the track marks wouldn't show, he said. This addiction made him mean.
"When I was growing up . . . I never let nothing get the better of me. But the drugs beat me. To make up for that, I took it out on everybody else."
His drug addiction and the fact that he knew he would be sentenced on Dec. 12 to two years in prison for burglary made him dangerous, he said. It was a mood he and his family recognized.
Soon after the first robbery involving all four, on Nov. 1, the men came up with the idea of a "club," Sumrell said. Police and prosecutors said the club had two rules: To belong, you had to kill someone, and when you committed a crime, you left no witnesses.
Sumrell said he is comfortable in prison. He has learned to hand-roll a cigarette in about three seconds and smokes about 60 a day. He sang in a recently disbanded prison rock group that covered such songs as the Who's "Who Are You?"
To try to understand himself, he also reads biographies of infamous serial killers: Henry Lee Lucas, who confessed to 360 murders; David Berkowitz, the so-called Son of Sam; and Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker. He said he would have used the insanity plea if he had read about these men before his trial.
Sumrell admits that he is a danger to society.
"Oh, yeah, I wish I was free," he said. "But I think everybody else should be glad I'm behind bars."
by CNB