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

DATE: SATURDAY, May 14, 1994                   TAG: 9405160011
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-10   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: By KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD                                LENGTH: Medium

FORMER STUDENT GETS PROBATION AFTER BREAK-IN

Nathaniel R. Reed III was found guilty of the break-in and two misdemeanor charges of assault and battery. But Friday in Radford Circuit Court, Judge Duane Mink decided to take the charges under advisement for five years.

Reed was the only one of six defendants convicted during a February trial.

He and five others, all members of Chi Phi fraternity, were accused of breaking into a woman's bedroom to avenge an earlier altercation between Reed and the woman's boyfriend.

Mink dismissed the charges against the five because of questions about the way the victims went about identifying their alleged attackers: conducting their own investigation and then supplying names to police.

Friday, Mink placed Reed on probation for the five years the charges are under advisement, reserving the right to convict him of the felony break-in charge and the two assault charges, Commonwealth's Attorney Randal Duncan said.

Generally, cases taken under advisement for a specific time period are dismissed if the person does not get into any further legal trouble and completes any requirements of probation, community service or other provision a judge might impose.

The woman had testified Reed came to her apartment looking for her roommates who were not there, then cursed her when she asked him to leave. The woman's boyfriend and Reed got into a scuffle, the woman testified, and Reed was carried out the door and hit once by the boyfriend, according to the prosecution's evidence.

The woman testified she and her boyfriend awoke an hour later when Reed and several people crashed into their bedroom and began attacking them.

But Reed testified he was assaulted when he voluntarily left the apartment. And he denied returning to the apartment. He said he went to a party later that evening, and that several people there were upset about the attack and apparently went to the apartment to avenge his eye injury without his encouragement.

Reed obtained a warrant against the man he says struck him, but it was dismissed in General District Court.