
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 3, 1991                   TAG: 9103030190
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

5 TEENS WHO KNEW ONE ANOTHER SLAIN

With an average of 14 homicides per year over the past decade, Roanoke is the kind of city where most people are shocked when murder hits close to home.

But for a small group of young black men, murder has hit home.

Five murders over the past two years - about a fifth of the killings in Roanoke during that time - involved members of the same loosely knit group of teen-agers.

While the events that led to the killings were not related, the people all knew one another.

It started two years ago, when 18-year-old Ronny Grogan, a former high school football star, was shot to death in a drug-related dispute at the Lincoln Terrace housing project.

In a charge that would later be dropped, police accused Gary Hancock, 25, of killing Grogan. Hancock's younger brother, Corey, was reportedly involved in the argument that led to Grogan's death.

The next month, Corey Hancock, 19, was killed at an open-air crack market after he argued with another 19-year-old over a $25 rock of crack cocaine.

Three months later, 17-year-old Warren E. Lemons was charged with murder and malicious wounding in a racially charged shooting outside a nightclub for teen-agers. Lemons was with Grogan at Lincoln Terrace the night he died and was called as a key prosecution witness. But charges against Gary Hancock were dropped after Lemons changed his story and said he couldn't make a positive identification.

One week after Lemons was charged with murder, an 18-year-old who was with him the night of the Club 19 shooting was shot to death in New York City.

In what New York officials say was a contract killing arranged to settle a drug deal gone bad, Bryan "Chipper" Gunn was shot to death in a motel room in the Bronx.

The next year, in June 1990, 18-year-old Lonnie Davis - who was with Grogan the night he died and who was wounded in the shooting - was shot to death as a group of teens argued after a high school graduation party.

Authorities say that the deaths of Grogan, Hancock, Gunn, and Davis - and the charges against Lemons - show how such a small group of teens can cause so much trouble.

Sgt. A.S. Smith of the Roanoke Police Department said that a group of about 30 people become involved again and again in shootings, disturbances and other illegal activity.

"It's the same names on a constant basis," Smith said. "These are the people who are involved in the shootings, and ultimately they are coming in as the homicide victims."

Keywords:
ROMUR

by CNB