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

DATE: SATURDAY, February 5, 1994                   TAG: 9402050069
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MAN WHO SLASHED CHILD AT STORE GETS 25 YEARS

A man with a history of mental illness was sentenced to 25 years in prison Friday for random attacks on two children, including the slashing of an 8-year-old at a Roanoke discount store.

Jerry A. Jones received the sentence under a plea agreement reached in Roanoke Circuit Court.

Jones - who has been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic - has been charged three times in the past 10 years with shooting, slashing or punching people who crossed his path by chance.

Court records show that in one case, Jones, 30, believed he heard voices commanding him to attack someone.

Last July, Jones was in the Kmart store at Crossroads Mall when he walked up to 8-year-old Russell Woodring, pulled out a knife and cut him on the neck, according to earlier testimony.

"To my knowledge, there was no real reason" for the attack, said Public Defender Ray Leven.

Woodring's mother, Kathleen, 37, was cut on the chin during the attack. She told authorities that Court records show that in one case, Jones, 30, believed he heard voices commanding him to attack someone. Jones showed no emotion during the incident and then calmly walked away.

Both she and her son were treated at Community Hospital of Roanoke Valley and released the same day.

At the time of that incident, Jones was free on bond awaiting trial for allegedly punching 16-year-old Doris Short in the face as she waited for her school bus seven months earlier.

At Friday's hearing, Jones pleaded guilty to malicious wounding and unlawful wounding in connection with both attacks.

In 1983, Jones was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the shooting of Ronald Brewer. After hearing voices and hallucinating that someone was trying to kill him, Jones shot Brewer twice in the back and twice in the ankle, according to court records.

Jones spent the next five years in a mental hospital, longer than he likely would have stayed in prison had he received the maximum sentence for malicious wounding, prosecutors have said. Defendants found not guilty by reason of insanity are held in mental hospitals until it is determined that they are no longer a threat to themselves or others.

Despite continuing problems with mental illness, Jones chose not to use an insanity defense to his most recent charges, Leven said.

by CNB