Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 3, 1995 TAG: 9502030059
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Short
But what really hurt, Michael J. Lisi said, is what the judge did with his skateboard.
After Lisi was convicted Thursday of skateboarding on a Roanoke sidewalk - a criminal offense, albeit a rarely enforced one - General District Judge George Harris ordered that his skateboard be destroyed.
``I don't think it's fair,'' said Lisi, 20. ``I'm skateboarding, just trying to pass the time away, when I could have been out dealing drugs or something.''
The way Lisi sees it, he ``wasn't hurting anybody'' the day he ran afoul of Section 30-13.1 of the city code, which regulates the ``use of wheelbarrows, handcarts, bicycles, skates, etc., on sidewalks.''
Authorities, however, say there have been complaints from downtown merchants and shoppers about skateboarders impeding traffic on sidewalks and streets.
Sgt. K.A. Johnson of the Roanoke Police Department said Lisi and 19-year-old David Gene Webb, who also was fined Thursday and whose skateboard met the same fate as Lisi's, had been warned about the law.
Johnson said the two were skateboarding on the sidewalk and street outside the Norfolk Southern building the night of Jan. 1 and ducked behind a wall when his patrol car passed.
Caught in the act, both Lisi and Webb pleaded guilty Thursday.
Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell, who has seen only a few skateboard cases in his tenure as prosecutor, said he was not sure how the skateboards would be destroyed.
``I was kind of wondering that myself,'' Lisi said.
by CNB