ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, May 9, 1996 TAG: 9605090081
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
BBs thought to have hit Gilmore van
RICHMOND - Attorney General Jim Gilmore usually fights crime. This time, he was a victim.
Gilmore thought it was a shotgun blast that hit the windshield of the minivan he was riding in. State police say they think it was a BB shot.
Whatever it was, no one was hurt, although the windshield - dotted with small craters - will have to be replaced.
``If you're going 70, 75 miles per hour and BBs are hurled at your windshield, it's going to break,'' said Mary Evans, a state police spokeswoman.
The incident occurred about 11:30 p.m. Friday on Interstate 64 in Richmond. Gilmore had been dozing in the passenger's seat while returning to his home in Henrico County from a Christian Coalition dinner in Virginia Beach.
Gilmore said he was shaken by what ``sounded like a chain being thrown upon the windshield'' on the passenger's side.
State police said the incident was one of at least three between Friday and Sunday nights in which motorists on I-64 near Interstate 295 reported their vehicles were showered with metal pellets.
Gilmore and the driver, Chief Deputy Attorney General David L. Anderson, said they believe whatever it was that struck Anderson's blue 1995 Dodge Caravan - complete with a ``Gilmore '97'' bumper sticker on the back - came from the shoulder of the road, rather than an overpass.
- Associated Press
Teen's murder charge reduced
WINCHESTER - A judge has reduced the capital murder charge against a Front Royal teen-ager accused in the beating death of a 2-year-old girl.
After the prosecution completed its case Wednesday, Circuit Judge John Wetsel said the evidence didn't support capital murder. He said he would change the charge to either first-or second-degree murder today.
The decision means that defendant Raycharo Johnson, if convicted, cannot receive a death sentence.
Defense attorneys argued that evidence of an alleged sexual assault of the victim had not been introduced by the prosecution.
Commonwealth's Attorney Paul Thomson contended Johnson, who was 16 when Aeriuna Powell was slain, attempted to sexually assault the girl while baby-sitting her Nov.9.
But the judge said the injury claimed by Thomson as sexual could have been caused by a nonsexual attack. |- Associated Press
Schizophrenic killer to inherit $200,000
CHARLOTTESVILLE - A schizophrenic woman who fatally shot her mother in April 1993 will inherit more than $200,000 in the settlement of a lawsuit that ended more than a year of family feuding.
Under the settlement approved last week in Albemarle County Circuit Court, Dereth Stow Chase received less than half the $500,000 that Marion H. Chase intended for her.
Chase, 35, shot her mother during a psychotic spell. She was acquitted of a murder charge in February 1994 because she was insane at the time of the killing, a judge ruled.
However, her three brothers filed a wrongful death lawsuit against her.
Chase, who had a long history of mental troubles and had been committed 23 times in the 12 years before her mother's death, remains at Central State Hospital in Petersburg.
Chase is to appear in court on June 27 for a judge to decide if she is fit for release.
- Associated Press
Judge sets trial for Va. Beach `vampire'
VIRGINIA BEACH - A judge has set Aug. 5 for the trial of Jon C. Bush, an air-conditioning technician accused of raping or sexually molesting 13 girls between the ages of 13 and 16.
Three of Bush's alleged victims were in the courtroom Tuesday when Judge Alan E. Rosenblatt set the trial date on the 33 charges.
Police said Bush, 26, claims to be a vampire and used sex acts to initiate young girls into a clan.
Last month, Bush pleaded guilty in juvenile court in Chesapeake to contributing to the delinquency of three 15-year-old girls. The vampire claim was ``a ruse, a way to get girls,'' said Chesapeake deputy prosecutor Larry D. Willis.
- Associated Press
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