Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 24, 1995 TAG: 9508240052
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Jermaine K. Anderson, a mentally ill 20-year-old, admitted Wednesday that he set fire to his Roanoke home - just across the street from the spot where he started a fatal fire when he was 7.
Speaking slowly and wiping away tears with the tail of his jail-issued T-shirt, Anderson pleaded guilty in Roanoke Circuit Court to charges of arson and attempted malicious wounding.
In 1982, Anderson was charged with setting a fire on Patton Avenue Northwest that spread to an adjacent home and killed a 66-year-old woman. He became the youngest person in Virginia to be charged with murder, but a judge dismissed the charge after ruling that Anderson was unable to help with his defense and did not understand what he was accused of doing.
Thirteen years later, not much has changed.
Although mental evaluations found that Anderson is competent to stand trial and was not legally insane at the time of the fire last December, Assistant Public Defender William Fitzpatrick expects his client's mental condition will play a major role at his sentencing, scheduled for Oct.17.
"There's a lot of mitigation evidence here," Fitzpatrick told Judge Diane Strickland.
But Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Greg Phillips said he has "major concerns" that Anderson would pose a risk to society if he walked free any time soon.
At Wednesday's hearing, Phillips gave the following summary of the evidence against Anderson:
On the night of Dec. 21, police and firefighters responded to a report of a house fire on Patton Avenue. Lt. J.E. Lahar, the first officer on the scene, was told by a relative that Anderson had started the fire and was still inside.
Going inside, Lahar saw Anderson peering down from the top of a staircase, with flames rising behind him. Anderson then threw a 12-inch knife at the police officer.
Lahar ducked, and the knife missed by inches. After using pepper mace to subdue Anderson and remove him from the house, police were told how the fire started.
Anderson's grandmother said he had been acting strangely for several days. When she mentioned that he might have to go back to a mental hospital, the grandmother said, Anderson became irate.
He then lit a piece of paper on the stove, ran upstairs and started a fire in a closet, she said. The fire endangered the lives of three people in the house, but prosecutors agreed to drop charges of attempted murder.
After the hearing, Anderson was returned to the Roanoke City Jail, where he has been held since his arrest in December.
Fitzpatrick declined to elaborate on the findings of mental tests that Anderson has undergone in jail. Since he was 6, Anderson has received more than 30 psychological evaluations and was recently diagnosed as suffering from a schizo-affective disorder, a form of schizophrenia.
by CNB