THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, April 27, 1995 TAG: 9504270343
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON FRANK, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
He was 63. She was 22. But that didn't keep them from being good friends.
Early Wednesday morning, however, the years-long friendship of Charlie Brown Jr. and Tonya Childs ended in death.
During an argument at Brown's residence at 11 Grand St. in Douglass Park, Brown shot Childs once in the chest, police said. Paramedics pronounced her dead at the scene.
Moments later, Brown turned himself in, police said. He was charged with murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. Then he was released on a $10,000 bond.
It was a tragic end for Childs, the mother of two young children, who friends and neighbors said had suffered under the burden of personal problems since her graduation from I.C. Norcom High School in 1989.
``Tonya was struggling very hard with problems,'' her grandmother, Elnora P. Anderson, said Wednesday. ``But she was the sweetest child I have ever seen.''
Anderson, who shared her residence in the 300 block of Carver Circle with her granddaughter and two great-grandchildren, said that Childs had been an excellent student at I.C. Norcom.
``She did wonderful in school,'' Anderson said. ``She was a child who anyone would have been proud of.''
But after her graduation, friends said, Childs fell in with the wrong crowd.
One of her friends died last month when he put a handgun to his head, spun the chamber and pulled the trigger.
Childs told police that she was present when the shooting occurred and that her friend died after playing Russian roulette. Some friends doubted the story, but police ruled the death accidental and called the wound self-inflicted.
Her friendship with Brown dated back several years, friends said.
Antonio Williams, 23, who used to live in one side of the duplex that Brown owned and lived in, said that Brown drove Childs around the neighborhood and entertained her at his house on Grand Street. The relationship didn't rest well with Childs' boyfriend - a younger man.
``He didn't like her coming to the old man's house,'' Williams said.
On Tuesday, neighbors saw them together most of the day.
Police say that early Wednesday morning, Childs returned to Brown's house to retrieve a purse she had left there on Tuesday. While the two were together in Brown's house, police said, Childs threatened Brown. When Brown demanded that she leave, Childs refused, and the two struggled physically. Soon after, Childs was shot.
Brown's friends and family on Wednesday said that he was not a violent man. A civilian employee at Portsmouth Naval Hospital for 40 years, Brown had never been in trouble with the law, they said.
``But something funny was going on here,'' said Linwood Brown, Charlie's 61-year-old brother. ``Here is a man 63 years old and a woman only 22.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Tonya Childs, 22, (above) was killed; Charlie Brown Jr., 63, was
charged.
KEYWORDS: MURDER SHOOTING ARREST by CNB