ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times

DATE: Friday, April 11, 1997                 TAG: 9704110074
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: C-5  EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS

WITNESSES: KILLER DIDN'T RESEMBLE DEFENDANTACCORDING TO TESTIMONY, THE MAN LEAVING THE SHOOTING WAS SLIM AND CLEAN CUT, UNLIKE THE DEFENDANT.

Defense witnesses testified Thursday that a man accused of the unprovoked shooting of a black student wasn't the man they saw leaving the scene of the fatal shooting.

The defense witnesses described the man they saw as slim and lacking facial hair, unlike the heavyset and mustachioed defendant, Michael Edward King.

King, 45, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of 18-year-old Phillip Bell on Oct. 27.

King, who is white, was convicted in 1970 of the malicious wounding of two blacks and served nine years in prison before being released on parole.

In a search of King's home after Bell's shooting, police found Ku Klux Klan literature and a newspaper clipping about the 1970 drive-by shootings.

Authorities said Bell was walking next to a street with several other youths when King drove by. The mirror on King's pickup almost brushed Bell's arm, according to Melvin Hagans.

Hagans, one of the youths walking with Bell, said Bell made a comment about how close the truck came to him. Seconds later, he said, King stopped, got out and asked the youths if they said something about his truck.

They ran. Bell was shot in the back.

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