Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 7, 1994 TAG: 9407070123
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Raymond B. King Sr., 27, had pleaded guilty to charges of malicious wounding, breaking and entering and unlawful wounding.
King was out on bond on charges of assaulting his girlfriend, Carolyn Hooper, when he broke down the door to her home last August.
Hooper said King "knocked the door off its hinges and splintered it."
King then pulled out a kitchen knife and stabbed Hooper eight times and his infant son twice, according to testimony from Wednesday's hearing.
The baby, which was premature and had health problems, fell to the floor as Hooper was being stabbed. The child, Raymond King Jr., suffered minor cuts in the attack and has since recovered, Hooper said.
Two weeks before the stabbing, King had approached Hooper in a grocery store and struck her in the face, said Paul Belcher, who was with Hooper at the time.
Belcher and a neighbor of Hooper's both testified that King told Hooper he would kill her if she called the police to report the assault.
Hooper said she continues to have nightmares about King, who served a five-year prison sentence stemming from a 1987 malicious wounding conviction involving another girlfriend and her mother.
"[King] told [Hooper] what he was going to do and then he acted it out," Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Ann Gardner told Roanoke Circuit Court Judge Roy Willett in asking for a maximum sentence of 50 years. "He has demonstrated he will go out and do it again."
Dr. Henry Gwaltney, a state criminal psychologist, testified that King suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and has an "explosive personality." He also said King was a "perfect patient" at the state hospital where he was evaluated and kept on several types of medication, including lithium.
Gardner then prodded Gwaltney on King's violent criminal background and the fact that only King can be responsible for making sure he takes his medication.
"I think unfortunately that Mr. King is one in a group of mental patients who, when they stop taking their medicine, becomes violent," he said.
Assistant Public Defender Roger Dalton, in his closing argument, said King "hasn't always dealt with things in the best way."
Dalton asked for a less than maximum sentence, based on King's mental problems and the testimony that he can function more normally when on medication.
Willett sentenced King to 10 years for the malicious wounding of Hooper; 10 years for breaking and entering; and five years for the unlawful wounding of his son.
"You're a dangerous person," Willett told King.
by CNB