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

DATE: FRIDAY, July 30, 1993                   TAG: 9307300250
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY  
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium

MONTGOMERY MAN SAYS GIRLFRIEND DARED HIM TO SHOOT HER

According to testimony during a hearing in Montgomery County Juvenile and Domestic Court on Thursday, the victim, Tabitha Jo Young Bell, accused her live-in boyfriend of being unfaithful. She also told Kelly Floyd Marshall that she would make his life hell.

In that case, Marshall said in a recorded statement played at the hearing, she would be joining him.

"Why don't you kill me now," Marshall said Bell told him,

His response was to get a loaded .12-gauge shotgun hanging on their living room wall, click off the safety and fire a round into the side of Bell's face.

The shot killed her almost instantly and cost the life of the couple's unborn child.

Bell was seven months pregnant when she died.

Marshall, 20, a laborer, walked to his stepfather's house nearby and called 911.

He was sitting in a lawn chair in front of his house near Walton when Deputy D.J. Trail arrived.

Trail testified that Marshall, trembling and crying, stood up and said, "Put the cuffs on me. I did it."

After hearing Marshall's statement, Judge J. Patrick Graybeal certified charges of first-degree murder and felonious firearm use against Marshall to the grand jury.

Marshall faces a single murder charge because state law does not allow him to be charged with the death of an unborn child, authorities said.

Marshall spoke softly during the taped statement he made to investigators, which recounted the events of May 6 at the small house he shared with Bell.

He said he spent much of the previous week fishing with friends. When he returned home from work on May 6, Bell, 22, was "fussing and raising hell" about his lack of attention to her.

Marshall said he left the house twice after arguing with Bell. When he returned the second time, the argument intensified, and Marshall said he shot Bell as she stood in the kitchen.

Investigators found the shotgun on the living-room sofa and ashell casing nearby.

Testimony indicated Bell and Marshall had met about a year earlier at a trailer park. They began living together late last year after Bell became pregnant.

Defense attorney John Huntington asked that Marshall's taped statement be turned off as the defendant began to discuss the child.

Marshall said later in the statement that he was the child's father, said Peggy Frank, assistant commonwealth's attorney.

Marshall, who is being held at the Montgomery County jail under $150,000 bond, bowed his head and blinked his eyes as his statement was played.

Sheriff's Investigator Bill Tolley said Marshall was "calmer than I would have expected a person to be" as he made the statement, even though jailers later placed Marshall on a suicide watch.