THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 28, 1995 TAG: 9512280307
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines
Officials at Norfolk State University ignored ``violent, unsafe and dangerous'' conditions in a dormitory last year, causing the murder of a student there, according to a lawsuit filed against the school by the victim's mother.
The lawsuit also charges Norfolk State with failing to change the lock combination on the victim's room, allowing one of the killers, a former roommate, to get inside.
The victim, Gerard Edwards, an 18-year-old freshman from a Maryland suburb outside Washington, was shot to death while sleeping in his dorm room in Samuel F. Scott Hall on Jan. 18, 1994.
The lawsuit was filed last week in Circuit Court by Edwards' mother. It seeks $10 million.
An identical lawsuit, also seeking $10 million, was filed by Edwards' roommate, Ronald Richardson of New Jersey, who was shot and wounded in the attack.
Both lawsuits name nine defendants: the university, President Harrison Wilson, housing director Madge Sharpe-Williams, an unnamed company in charge of changing the dorm's lock combinations, and five unnamed employees in charge of the dorm's security and maintenance.
Norfolk State officials, who are on vacation this week, had little comment Wednesday.
``At this time we have not been officially notified,'' said James Satterfield, vice president of student affairs. ``Everything will be handled by the attorney general's office.''
The shootings stemmed from rivalry between two student groups from New York and Washington. The killers belonged to the 718 Crew, named for one of New York's area codes. Edwards was friendly with the D.C. Boys.
Edwards was shot 10 times and died quickly. Richardson was shot in the abdomen but survived.
Four fellow students were convicted of the killing. They received prison sentences ranging from 11 to 68 years.
Triggerman Shamont Burrell was a former roommate of the victims and knew the combination of their dorm room lock. According to court testimony, he punched in the combination around 3 a.m. and entered the victims' room with another student, then shot the victims as they slept.
The lawsuit says Edwards and Richardson were required to live in a dorm because they were out-of-state freshmen. It says the university knew Burrell had moved out of the room and had a duty to change the door lock combination.
The lawsuit also says that ``conditions at Scott dormitory were violent, unsafe and dangerous and NSU was aware, or reasonably should have been aware, of these conditions.'' Yet, the lawsuit says, school officials ``took no action to adequately protect (students) from the violence it knew occurred in its dormitories.''
One lawyer who filed the lawsuit, Joel Davies of Lakehurst, N.J., declined to elaborate. Another, Howard J. Marx of Norfolk, could not be reached.
But during the criminal trials, some students talked about campus violence.
One defendant, Derrick Washington, who was a lookout during the shooting, testified that he sought help from school officials to stop violence between student groups, to no avail. He said a dorm official, teachers and campus police ignored him when he tried to explain the problem, and dorm security guards told him, ``Stand up for yourself. Be a man.''
In March, a former Scott Hall dorm resident adviser testified that conditions in and near the dorm were so dangerous that he kept a loaded gun for protection during his rounds.
After the trials, university officials and some students said problems at the dorm and on campus have eased in the past two years. ``What (Washington) said was inaccurate,'' Satterfield said in October. ``Everybody he would have spoken to would have helped. . . We always take everything very seriously. We try to protect our students at all times. Any time anyone comes to an administrator or campus police and makes a complaint, no one brushes it off. We check into it.''
Today, Norfolk State posts a security officer on every dorm floor, the campus police chief said earlier this month.
KEYWORDS: LAWSUIT NORFOLK STATE UNIVERSITY MURDER by CNB