THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 1, 1995 TAG: 9509010487
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 103 lines
In the months before Joey Garcia was slain, Kelly Dara became romantically obsessed with him and made sexual advances that included offering him money for sex, according to testimony Thursday.
That testimony came on the opening day in the trial of Dara, charged with murder in the stabbing death of Garcia. Several former Salem High School classmates described her fixation with him.
``I'm a nympho, and I want Joey,'' former classmate Peter J. Mitchell said Dara told him.
The conversations occurred in a marketing class that Dara, Garcia and several friends took at Salem High, Mitchell said. They got to be a joke.
``She wrote me a note asking to have sex with Joey,'' he said. ``He said, `Oh no, you've got to pay for this.' She said, `OK. I'll pay for it.' ''
One day, she gave Garcia gasoline money when he gave her a ride to work, and she told him: ``That goes toward the sex,'' Mitchell testified.
So far, Dara's trial has all the elements of a television drama, with testimony about a $500 cash drop-off in a mailbox, people hiding out on the roof and sneaking through bedroom windows, and many of those involved carrying pagers.
A parade of witnesses - many of them classmates - told of conversations with Dara and her boyfriend, Joshua Johnson, in the days before March 6 when Garcia, 17, died from a stab wound to the back that punctured his lung.
They talked of Dara and Johnson's plan to run away to North Carolina and then Florida.
Johnson was convicted in June of first-degree murder, attempted robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery, and a jury recommended that he be sentenced to life in prison. His sentencing is set for Wednesday.
Dara faces the same charges and a possible life term if convicted.
On Thursday, Glen Adams Jr., 18, a former Salem student who once dated Dara, testified that in a conversation the morning of March 6, Dara and Johnson asked him if he could get them a gun or a knife.
The two told him they planned to kill Garcia by throwing a blanket over his head, stabbing him in the back and beating him with a baseball bat, Adams testified.
There was a gasp from listeners in the courtroom when Arceo Vitangcol, 20, testified that he and some friends had planned to beat Garcia after Dara had told him that Garcia had threatened Vitangcol with a gun.
She also had told Vitangcol that Garcia had beaten her, the witness said.
Vitangcol said Dara told him on March 6 that he wouldn't have to worry about Garcia anymore.
In his opening statement, prosecutor Albert Alberi portrayed Dara as an unhappy teenager fixated on Garcia - a boy who had little interest in her. She started skipping school to be with Johnson, and the two plotted to come up with the money to run away together.
On March 4, Johnson tried to get $500 from a friend - arranging to have the money left in a mailbox - but the funds never appeared, testified Tina Watson, a 10th-grader at Salem.
Alberi said Johnson and Dara's plan turned sinister when Dara conspired to steal Garcia's car and lured him to her house. ``In that assistance she provided to Joshua Johnson, she did, in fact, set in motion events that took Joey Garcia's life.''
But Thomas B. Shuttleworth, one of the attorneys representing Dara, countered, saying that although Dara is guilty of bad judgment, there will be no evidence that she killed Garcia.
``Kelly Dara was upstairs during that fight,'' he said. He also asked jurors whether it made sense that Dara ``cooks up a scheme to lure some guy to her house and then proceeds to tell half of Virginia Beach about it.''
Watson testified that Johnson told her he wanted to steal a Honda CRX to please Dara, who liked that kind of car because it was fast.
Johnson told Watson he planned to steal one by using a taser - a battery-powered device that sends a nonlethal electrical charge into a person and renders him immobile - then stabbing the driver and using some old expired license plates of Dara's to get away.
One of the most visibly emotional moments of the day came when Dara's mother, Regina Dara, took the witness stand, and Dara began to cry. Her mother quietly told her, ``It's OK.''
During her testimony, Regina Dara said her husband kept several guns in the house, that they were not locked up, and that her daughter knew where they were. She also said that the license plates police found in her daughter's room the day Garcia was stabbed had been there since Christmas and that her daughter had planned to hang them on her bedroom wall.
Kenneth Sanderson, 18, a neighbor of the Daras, said he saw Kelly Dara and Johnson between 2:30 and 3:30 p.m. March 6 - shortly after the stabbing. Johnson told him, ``He hit her so I went after him.'' Johnson then asked Sanderson how he could get out of the neighborhood, and Johnson and Dara fled. Sanderson then told police what he knew.
After Dara was released briefly on a legal technicality, her high-profile case prompted Garcia's family and friends to unite in a group called ``Justice for Joey.'' The members organized rallies and printed bumper stickers and T-shirts.
Prosecutors expect to complete their case by noon today. Defense attorneys then will have their turn. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MOTOYA NAKAMURA/Staff
Kelly Dara listens to the opening statement Thursday by prosecutor
Albert Alberi, who portrayed Dara as an unhappy teenager fixated on
Joey Garcia - a boy who had little interest in her.
KEYWORDS: MURDER ARREST TRIAL by CNB