ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, August 7, 1996 TAG: 9608070032
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
The youngest person in Roanoke to be sent to prison will be pushing 30 by the time he gets out.
Davon Antonio Anderson, who was 14 when he beat two men nearly to death in separate attacks in Old Southwest more than a year ago, was sentenced Tuesday to 15 years in prison.
Anderson is the youngest person to be convicted as an adult in Roanoke Circuit Court under new laws aimed at curbing a growing juvenile crime rate.
He was described by a prosecutor as a "brutal animal" that needed to be "caged."
Earlier this year, Anderson pleaded no contest and was convicted on two counts of malicious wounding. Prosecutors said he barged into David Chase's Mountain Avenue apartment and beat him senseless with a sawed-off baseball bat, then put Roger Boothe in a coma several hours later by attacking him on a nearby street and stomping his head on a sidewalk.
Anderson's defense portrayed him as a troubled youth with an upbringing nearly as disturbing as those attacks.
Neglected by his parents at an early age, Anderson was left to fend for himself - sometimes eating watermelon seeds off the sidewalks of a public housing project because there was no food for him at home.
Anderson's mother sold the shoes off his feet to support her drug habit, witnesses testified, and he had been abused physically, sexually and emotionally by the time he was 14.
All that may be true, Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Wanda DeWease said, but "it is the commonwealth's position that his upbringing does not give him a wholesale license to be a brutal animal."
Judge Richard Pattisall, who had earlier referred Anderson to a special program for youthful offenders that carried a sentence of up to three years, ultimately agreed with DeWease after learning that Anderson's record made him ineligible for the program.
"I have the greatest sympathy for you," Pattisall told Anderson. "But I cannot shut my eyes to what you have done."
As part of a plea agreement reached earlier in the case, 15 years was the maximum punishment that Anderson faced. He will not be eligible for parole, and must serve at least 85 percent of his sentence.
When he gets to prison, Anderson will find himself in the company of older and more hardened criminals. At the time of his conviction last year, a spokesman with the Department of Corrections said there were only two other 15-year-olds in the state's prison system.
In remarks to Pattisall just before he was sentenced, Anderson asked why he could not get the help that he needs. Sending young people to prison with convicted murderers and thieves will only make them worse when they come out, he said.
"That influences them, because they have to live with those people," he said. "That's the only life they know."
Turning to the nearly empty courtroom, Anderson also alluded to the lack of parental support he had growing up. "I'm 15 years old," he said. "I don't see none of my family members in here. None of them."
Anderson has been incarcerated since the night of May 2, 1995, when he and a 17-year-old co-defendant were charged with the aggravated malicious wounding of Chase and Boothe.
Chase, 38, suffered head injuries and a fractured skull after the two juveniles posed as police and burst into his apartment, beating him with a sawed-off baseball bat. The incident stemmed from an argument that Chase had earlier with the mother of the 17-year-old, Leo Harper.
As police investigated, they were called to the scene of another beating several blocks away. They found Boothe, 39, curled in a fetal position. He was in a a coma for several months, and is permanently disabled as a result of his injuries.
In an earlier summary of the evidence, DeWease said Boothe was attacked after he approached the two youths, asked to buy drugs and then made a sexual comment. After knocking Boothe to the ground, Anderson stomped his head several times as he lay on the sidewalk, DeWease said.
Assistant Public Defender Michelle Derrico had asked Pattisall to sentence Anderson to a juvenile correctional facility, even though he was convicted as an adult.
"This is no juvenile," DeWease responded. "He's 15 years old, but he is 6 feet tall and 200 pounds. He is angry, he is brutal and he has shown that he can be violent."
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