ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, March 1, 1996 TAG: 9603010038
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: HILLSVILLE
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
A Carroll County grand jury will decide whether to indict a North Carolina man on a capital murder charge in last May's shooting deaths of a former Pulaski County couple.
Dennis Stoneman, 44 of Surry County, N.C., is charged with the May 16 murders of James Steven Quesenberry, 44, and Tina Hill Quesenberry, 33. The two were shot to death in their car in the parking lot of Westview Terrace Apartments. A judge certified the charges to the grand jury Thursday.
The Quesenberrys had been helping Theresa Stoneman, Dennis Stoneman's estranged wife and Tina Quesenberry's half-sister, move into one of the apartments. Theresa Stoneman wasn't harmed in the shooting.
The Quesenberrys lived in Carroll County, where Tina Quesenberry grew up. Previously, Steven Quesenberry owned and operated the Sports Shop in Pulaski County where he was active in recreational activities and a program director at the Hensel Eckman YMCA. He was a graduate of Pulaski County High School, where he was on the football, track and basketball teams.
The prosecution's main witness at Thursday's preliminary hearing was the Stonemans' 16-year-old son, D.J., who was staying with his father last May.
D.J. Stoneman said he rode with his father from North Carolina to Carroll County on May 16. They borrowed a car in Fancy Gap because, he testified, Dennis Stoneman said he didn't want anyone to recognize his pickup truck.
The boy said his father was determined to see his mother and a brother who was staying with her "no matter what it takes."
He said his father stopped their borrowed car beside the Quesenberrys' car in the parking lot, an argument broke out and grew heated, and "before I knew it, the shots were fired ... rapidly, one after the other."
Then they drove away, he said.
The boy said he did not know his father had taken the .38-caliber revolver from his truck to the borrowed car until the shooting began. "He always carried a gun with him everywhere he went," D.J. Stoneman testified.
Dennis Stoneman was arrested later in Surry County.
In addition to the capital murder charge, he also faces a charge of possessing a firearm after being convicted of a felony. He was convicted of rape in 1977.
Dr. David Oxley, deputy chief medical examiner for Western Virginia, said Steven Quesenberry had been shot twice in the head; his wife was shot once.
The grand jury's next meeting will be March 11.
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