THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 26, 1995 TAG: 9507260362
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 152 lines
Jennifer Johnson and her 14-year-old son Nicholas made plans to stay home on a Wednesday night in 1994 and watch a television documentary on children killing children.
They never got the chance.
Two nights earlier, on April 25, 1994, Nicholas Johnson became a statistic of just the kind of violence depicted on the program - a child victim of other children, an eighth-grader robbed of the rest of his life.
On Tuesday, Corey Wilson, the 18-year-old who claimed that life, who fired the gun that killed Nicholas Johnson, was sentenced to 83 years in prison. He was the third and final defendant to be sentenced in the case.
Like Jennifer Johnson, the crime is never far from Beverly Wright's mind. She feels the anguish daily. She is Corey Wilson's mother.
Before Circuit Judge Thomas S. Shadrick imposed the sentence, Wright took the stand and testified. ``I'm very sorry for everything that's happened, and I know that my son is too,'' she said. ``I love him very much, and I know that he has learned a lesson from this.''
Then, in tears, she asked the judge for one last chance to hug her son. But Shadrick told her he thought that would breach the security policies of the Sheriff's Department. There would be no final hug.
Wilson then stood and read a letter he had written in his jail cell. ``I never intended for anything like that to happen,'' he said. ``I'm truly sorry for my actions. I pray to God every day for Nicholas and his family.''
Shadrick told those in the courtroom he wished other children could hear Wilson's words before they made similar mistakes.
``We're seeing this type of case all too often in the courtroom,'' he said. ``All of the defendants when they appear in court are sorry and wish they could have that day back. It's too late for you now. You've already made the mistake. It's too late for the boy you killed. But it's not too late for the others out there.''
Then he sentenced Wilson, who will be eligible for parole consideration in 12 years.
In arguing for the maximum sentence of life, Commonwealth's Attorney Robert J. Humphreys told the court: ``Four families were devastated by this. They've all lost the children that existed that day.''
For Nick's mother, many questions remain unanswered.
``I just want to know what happened,'' Johnson said in a recent interview from her home in Alexandria, La. ``I'm still trying to put that little puzzle together. What really started it?''
Her son was shot at the Carriage House Apartments and died five minutes after paramedics arrived. He had been on his way home after spending the evening with his best friend.
Nick died from a single gunshot in his back as he ran up the stairs, desperately trying to escape the armed attackers, whom he didn't know.
Stuffed in Nick's pocket were his school lunch tickets. He also carried a 3-inch blade a friend had given him minutes before, thinking there might be trouble.
As a .380-caliber bullet pierced Nick's heart, kidney and esophagus, his mother was home in the nearby Lake Edward neighborhood watching the television news with a girlfriend.
Within minutes, a friend came to tell her something had happened to her son.
Johnson ran out of her apartment barefoot and into the woman's waiting car. They arrived at the Carriage House Apartments to find the area blocked by police officers, patrol cars and yellow crime scene tape. She remembers screaming and crying, trying to rip down the tape. She remembers the police holding her back, telling her she couldn't see her son.
``I told them I wanted to see my baby,'' she said. ``I told them once he saw me, he'd be all right, but they still wouldn't let me see him. I just couldn't imagine what had gone on.''
There are several versions of what happened that night in late April.
By one account, the three co-defendants had gone to rob another youth, a drug dealer they believed had money. In another version, the boys were looking for Nick.
The mother is not sure which she believes or if it even matters.
``I consider those three boys the judge, jury and executioner,'' she said. ``These guys just saw one thing: Doing harm to someone. And look what it's cost them.''
Still, Johnson is disappointed that the youths didn't receive tougher sentences.
Wilson pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, attempted robbery and a firearms charge in the killing of Johnson, and to another firearms charge and malicious wounding in the shooting of co-defendant Barry Etheridge. Prosecutors initially sought the death penalty against Wilson. At the time of the offense, he was on juvenile probation for possession of a sawed-off shotgun.
Etheridge, 18, was sentenced in January to 68 years for murder, attempted robbery and use of a firearm. His past juvenile record included a misdemeanor charge of assault by mob in 1991, violations of probation, and commitment to the Department of Youth and Family Services in July 1993 for having a concealed weapon. He had a parole violation pending at the time he was charged with murder.
Kente Evans, 18, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, attempted robbery and use of a firearm earlier this month and received 15 years in a plea agreement. His past record consisted of a curfew violation.
``The kids don't understand when you run in the gangs, it's just like you pulled the trigger,'' Johnson said. ``Maybe they'll have time to think of what they've done, and maybe when they get out they won't go back to that life.''
Johnson wonders how different her world might have been if she and her son had moved back to Louisiana in March or April of 1994 as she had intended. But Nick had wanted to stay until the end of classes at Bayside Middle School.
He wanted to go to high school in Alexandria, La., where he had grown up, and then on to Louisiana State University, where he hoped to play basketball. He and his mother had lived in Virginia Beach together since August 1991.
But his mother was troubled by neighborhood rivalries.
``I worried about the kids from Bayside Arms coming over and shooting, but when he went to Carriage House I was relieved,'' she said. ``Carriage House you'd never hear about things like that.''
Johnson always wanted her four sons - Nick; Kedric, 26; Derrick, 24; and Gregory, 21 - to know about the real world. She didn't try to shield them.
``Some parents don't like their kids to go places,'' she said. ``I say boys are going to be boys. I taught them not to start any fights, but if someone starts it they should protect themselves. I don't want them to be afraid. You meet different people, you learn different things.''
In the months after her son's death, Johnson moved home to live with her mother in Louisiana and has returned to Virginia Beach only once, in November 1994, for Etheridge's trial. On Tuesday, the day the final co-defendant was sentenced, Johnson started a new job.
``I have to move on,'' she said. ``I can't really stop. The hardest thing is trying to get a decent night's sleep.''
One of her most vivid memories of Nick's murder came in the weeks that followed as she walked home from work and neighborhood children would stop and point at her.
``There goes Nick's mama,'' they would say. Then they'd run up and wrap their arms around her in a hug.
They were all ages, all races, boys and girls. They were the children Nick always had time for on the basketball court.
``All I could do was smile and hug them and say, `You all liked Nick,' '' Johnson said. ``They'd say, `Yeah, Nick was our friend.'
``He wanted to show them another way than all that gang stuff,'' she said. ``He wanted to let them know there was more to life than just being stupid.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Nicholas Johnson was shot at the Carriage House Apartments in
Virginia Beach and died five minutes after paramedics arrived. He
died from a single gunshot in the back.
KEYWORDS: MURDER SHOOTING TRIAL SENTENCING by CNB