Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 7, 1992 TAG: 9201070154
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
3 TEENS INDICTED IN DEATHS
Three Roanoke teen-agers were indicted Monday on murder charges - two in connection with the death of a teen shot 18 times and the third in the fatal shooting of a 69-year-old man.Darrick S. Gentry, 18, and Wilbur I. Reid, 17, were indicted on charges of killing Anthony Lamont Kasey in a showdown of high-powered weapons in September.
In an unrelated case, the grand jury indicted 16-year-old Joseph Thomas Copeland on charges of fatally shooting Eldridge C. Ferris, 69, as he answered a knock to the door of his Day Avenue home.
Both cases involved handguns used by teen-agers too young to legally purchase the weapons in Virginia.
Reid and Copeland originally had been charged as juveniles, but their cases were transfered to Circuit Court to be tried as adults.
Kasey, 19, was killed in a burst of semiautomatic gunfire in a showdown that he staged by using a beeper to summon his adversaries to Portland Avenue Northwest.
Earlier testimony has shown that Kasey - armed with a high-powered assault rifle - was angry at Reid for seeing his girlfriend on the sly.
Vonkuren Saunders, who was with Kasey the night of the shooting and was also wounded, testified at a preliminary hearing last month that Kasey spoke of his plans for Reid as they drove to Portland Avenue the night of Sept. 6.
"He said he was going to show Little Wil the devil," Saunders testified.
But when Kasey arrived at the scene, he was met with at least 18 bullets from two 9-mm semiautomatic pistols. A third youth, 15, has been convicted of the unlawful wounding of Saunders and is awaiting sentencing.
In the other case, Copeland originally had been charged with the malicious wounding of Ferris. But three weeks after the Nov. 12 shooting, the charge was amended to murder after Ferris died at Roanoke Memorial Hospital.
Police have said that Copeland went to Ferris' home shortly after midnight in search of a younger relative.
When Ferris said the relative was asleep and could not come to the door, he was shot twice in the chest.
Because Reid and Copeland are juveniles, they were not identified by court officials until Monday, when they were indicted in Circuit Court as adults.
Keywords:
ROMUR