Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 20, 1991 TAG: 9103200170
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JON FRANK LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: YORK COUNTY LENGTH: Medium
Bound and gagged with plastic tape, the York County Elementary School first-grader suffocated when her nose and mouth were covered with adhesive during an abduction.
Officials accused a woman who was competing with Tiera's mother for the love of the same man.
"It was a love triangle thing," said Bennett, who helped dozens of fellow Yorkshire residents look for Tiera during a two-hour search early Tuesday.
Sheriff's deputies charged Mary E. Johnson, a nurse's aide, with Tiera's murder shortly after the body was found. They also charged her with abduction, breaking and entering and attempted murder. She was being held Tuesday night in Newport News City Jail on a $50,000 bond.
York County Sheriff P.S. Williams said he believed Tiera was accidentally killed while the attacker was attempting to do away with 22-year-old Terry Cooke, who was in love with Timothy Tynes, the man Johnson lived with.
"I think she was trying to kill the mother and was just trying to keep the child from seeing what was going on," Williams said.
The Norfolk medical examiner's office, Williams said, estimated that Tiera lived for only five minutes after the tape was placed over Cooke her nose and mouth about 4 a.m. Tuesday. Her legs and hands were bound with plastic and gray duct tape, and she had been covered with a brown sheet after being placed in the woods.
Williams said an intruder apparently sneaked into Cooke's two-bedroom apartment, silently abducted the child and then returned with the intention of killing Cooke.
Using a shotgun that was already in the apartment, the assailant attacked Cooke while she was asleep in bed, using the gun to bludgeon the woman instead of shooting her.
Terry Cooke fought off the attack, suffering a head wound and lacerations to both hands. She was treated Tuesday at a Newport News hospital and released.
A frightened neighbor who had heard the struggle called authorities.
When police arrived, Cooke hysterically told deputies, " `She's got my daughter. She's got my daughter.' "
An initial search by police turned up nothing, but police arrested Johnson in a nearby apartment and charged her with assaulting Cooke.
After enlisting the help of neighbors, searchers found Tiera's body about 6 a.m. in a small woods that children use as a play area. Tiera's body was unmarked, Williams said.
Williams said Johnson confessed a short time later.
Neighbors said Johnson had been wracked with jealousy over the relationship that Cooke had with Johnson's live-in boyfriend, Timothy Tynes. Tynes frequently visited Cooke at her apartment and had formerly dated her.
Johnson, they said, would walk around the town-house complex late at night and spy on Cooke's apartment.
"Nobody could understand why she was so quiet," Bennett said. "I guess she kept it inside so long that it finally just exploded."
Monday night, Cooke had gone with Tynes, Bennett and several other friends to an apartment complex in Newport News, where they drank, partied and watched the Mike Tyson fight. Johnson was left behind.
Bennett said he tried to warn Tynes that he was courting disaster by living with one woman and seeing another on the side.
"We told Tim, `Man, you got to stop your playing around,' " Bennett recalled. "But ain't nobody expected something like this to happen, taking it out on the kid."
by CNB