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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 9, 1993                   TAG: 9306090211
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

N.J. DETECTIVES TRACE PATH OF GUN

New Jersey homicide investigators will be in Roanoke County today in connection with the killing of a drug detective outside an Essex County courtroom last week.

Lt. John Farley of the Essex County prosecutor's office said detectives will try to determine how a stolen gun from Roanoke County got into the hands of a man they say killed Detective John Sczyrek.

Police said Al-Damanay Kamau, 25, shot Sczyrek in the head with a .357 Magnum stolen last October in Catawba. Police said a girlfriend of one of the defendants in a drug case involving Kamau smuggled the gun into the courthouse. The woman was an employee of New Jersey Superior Court.

Police said the pistol was one of 10 guns stolen from a Catawba residence on Oct. 27, 1992. Several days later some of the guns were used in an armed robbery in Athol, Mass.

Two Roanoke men, Christopher Karroll Morris, 19, and Julian Glenn Benoit, 21, were charged with the Catawba burglary. Morris has pleaded guilty and Benoit is awaiting trial.

Randall Cofske, who used to live in Roanoke, was charged in the armed robbery in Massachusetts.

Kamau is charged with purposeful murder and attempted murder.

by CNB