Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 9, 1994 TAG: 9403090141
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Hampton, 35, was taken into custody Monday afternoon, police said, after he stole a 62-year-old woman's car at a shopping center. Police pursued Hampton for about two miles after a witness to the car theft called police on his cellular phone.
Police say he forced the woman into her car and struck her several times in the face, then released her a short distance away.
Hampton was being held in the Guilford County Jail. He is scheduled to appear in Guilford District Court on April 7.
Law enforcement authorities from West Virginia, Pulaski County and Montgomery County had been searching for Hampton for almost two weeks in connection with a series of assaults and carjackings. Officials said the spree apparently was precipitated by a malicious wounding indictment issued by a Pulaski County grand jury on Feb. 22.
The indictment accused Hampton of the November beating of a 43-year-old Hazel Hollow Road man who remains hospitalized with a severe head injury.
Tuesday, Pulaski County Major Jim Davis said charges are pending against a second person in that attack.
Hampton was last seen officially in Virginia when he drove away from the Ironto rest area off Interstate 81 in a car that authorities say he took from a 77-year-old Maryland woman. That car was recovered in Rockingham County, N.C., on Sunday.
Hampton was convicted in 1976 of beating to death Della Clark Britt, 95, of Montgomery County.
Hampton, who was 16 at the time of the murder, was sentenced to 45 years in prison, but 15 years were suspended. He was paroled in May 1983.
Two years later, Hampton was back in prison after pleading guilty to 22 accounts of forgery. He was sentenced to 10 years on those charges and the 15-year suspended sentence was reimposed.
Hampton was released on discretionary parole in April 1992.
by CNB