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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 27, 1991                   TAG: 9103270301
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WOMAN IDENTIFIES MAN POLICE SHOT AS HER ATTACKER

Police said they were able to talk to the woman Tuesday at Roanoke Memorial Hospital, where she picked Morris from a photographic lineup.

The identification came one day after Morris' family members said they were convinced he had had nothing to do with the attack. Leonard Morris' brother, Desmond, spoke at a NAACP news conference in which he accused police of using excessive force.

Leonard Morris, 27, was shot as many as nine times by police after he stabbed one officer and rushed others at knifepoint while he was being questioned at his Southeast Roanoke home early Saturday, authorities said.

Although the NAACP is calling for a federal investigation on the issue of excessive force, the woman's identification of Morris appears to dispel accusations that police singled him out for interrogation simply because he was black.

The Rev. Carl Tinsley, a former president of the Roanoke branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, raised the possibility that white officers involved in the Morris shooting may have been emotionally influenced after being called to break up a racially charged disorder at a downtown restaurant about six hours earlier.

"The feelings were running high, and let's face it: We're human," Tinsley said. "I'm sure that with the facts in this case, with a white woman who had supposedly been stabbed by a black man, you can just imagine the feelings of those police officers."

But Police Chief M. David Hooper said Tuesday that the officers involved in the Morris shooting did not even respond to Macado's restaurant, where the disturbance occurred.

"Absolutely baseless," Hooper said of Tinsley's suggestion. "Absolutely."

Details of the incident remained sketchy Tuesday. Tinsley said that the NAACP had learned that the disturbance started when two off-duty police officers made racial remarks to a group of blacks at the restaurant.

"Everybody seems to think that police don't do that, but they do it on duty and off duty," Tinsley said.

Hooper confirmed Tuesday that he is aware of a disturbance at Macado's that involved off-duty police officers, but he declined to speak further until he learned more details of the incident. Macado's managers also declined to comment.

Meanwhile, the victim of the knife attack appeared to be recovering at Roanoke Memorial. She had been stabbed so many times that police went to Morris' home believing they were investigating a homicide.

The victim was able to talk to police briefly and identified Morris as her assailant. The woman told police she had already recognized Morris from his picture on television news accounts of the incident, but she was also able to pick him from a photographic lineup.

Police say the woman was able to give details about the inside of Morris' home that only someone who had been there would know.

The woman, who authorities said is in her 20s and from Bedford County, told police that she had met Morris at a city nightclub last Friday night. She said she had agreed to go home with Morris, and he then began to make sexual advances. When she resisted, he became angry, she told police.

At one point, he tried to lock her in a room, and he later took the telephone from her when she tried to call for help, the woman told police.

She managed to break free and run from the house, but Morris chased her. He caught her a few blocks away and used a knife to cut away her blouse, police said.

The woman was then stabbed repeatedly in the chest, arms and back. She was apparently left for dead in a parking lot at Walnut and Piedmont avenues, about two blocks from Morris' home on Arbutus Avenue.

A man on his way to work found her - barefoot, partially clad and bleeding badly - about 5:30 a.m. and called for help.

With the woman only able to tell police the name of her assailant, police used a records check to locate Morris' home, where they went about an hour later.

Police say Morris was cordial at first, inviting them inside, but that he suddenly grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed Officer H.P. McDaniel. Morris then charged the other officers, forcing Officer D.E. Sink and Sgt. G.C. Hurley to draw their revolvers and fire, police said.

In questioning the shooting, Roanoke NAACP President Evangeline Jeffrey has asked why police had to fire as many as nine shots, and why some bullet holes were found in the floor of the living room, where the confrontation happened.

Jeffrey said she has requested an investigation by the U.S. Justice Department through the FBI. An FBI spokesman in Richmond would not comment on whether the agency has been contacted about the case.