Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 21, 1993 TAG: 9304210203
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"Not any time soon," he testified.
But he made no promises.
"If that's the only way I have to go to make a living, then I'll have to," he said Tuesday in Roanoke Circuit Court.
"I've been doing time since I was 14. Time don't matter."
In matter-of-fact - sometimes defiant - testimony, Ingram told of how a Roanoke teen-ager can make $3,000 a week in a business that required him to purchase his 10th gun before he was old enough to drive a car.
It was a lifestyle, his attorney said, that led Ingram on a "collision course" with Steven E. Wikle.
Shortly before sunrise on a Sunday in November, Wikle drove to a stretch of Melrose Avenue Northwest where drugs are always for sale.
Wikle had been smoking crack that night; Ingram had been selling it.
When Wikle, 34, started to drive off without paying for a "rock" he was allowed to examine, Ingram pulled his gun and fired what he said was a blind shot.
It hit Wikle just behind his left ear, leaving him slumped over the steering wheel as his vehicle rolled into the back of a parked car.
Ingram described his actions in simple terms, as if puzzled that Wikle's relatives in the courtroom might have trouble comprehending them.
"All I know is that I gave him a rock, and he didn't give it back," he said.
Ingram - who had avoided a possible death sentence by pleading no contest to reduced charges of first-degree murder - told Judge Clifford Weckstein: "I don't expect nothing less than what I deserve."
The two-time convicted drug dealer, rapist and killer then stood up, leaned against the courtroom table with clenched fists and waited for the sentence.
"A sentencing judge has a lot of trouble with a Bobby Ingram," Weckstein said. "Guns and drugs are what he does, engaging in an increasing violent spiral of criminal activity."
When Weckstein announced the sentence of life in prison plus two years for a firearms charge, Ingram took a step backwards. He had faced 20 years to life.
Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Alice Ekirch said Ingram could be eligible for parole in 12 years.
In asking for a sentence of less than life, defense attorney Onzlee Ware had pointed out that Wikle had made three trips to Melrose Avenue the night he died.
"This is a case that will continue to happen as long as you have drug dealers and you have drug buyers," Ware said.
Wikle was the third person last year to be fatally shot after driving into an open-air crack market.
"You can go down there tonight and you'll see outsiders buying crack," Ware said. "It's sad, but it's predictable."
Ekirch called it an "insult to the memory of Mr. Wikle" to suggest he deserved to be shot in the head for buying drugs.
In asking for a life sentence, Ekirch said Ingram had shown "no sign of remorse."
That prompted Ingram to explain that in growing up on the streets, he learned early not to show his emotions.
"I've took somebody's life for something that didn't mean nothing to me," he said. "But just because I'm not crying doesn't mean I'm not sorry."
That was little consolation to Wikle's parents, who sat through the hearing Tuesday with about a dozen other relatives.
Just as many members of Ingram's family were sitting on the other side of the courtroom, as Ware was quick to point out.
But even in prison, Ingram will always be there for his relatives, Evert and Mary Jo Wikle wrote in a prepared statement.
"We don't have those things to console us," Wikle's parents wrote. "Steven was a loving and much-loved son, and nothing is going to help us understand his violent and senseless death."
Keywords:
ROMUR
Memo: ***CORRECTION***