THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, February 16, 1996 TAG: 9602160488
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOE JACKSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
Six years after pleading guilty to hiring a hit man to kill fellow drug gang members, Eugene ``Snookems'' Gomez was sentenced Thursday to three life terms for a quadruple murder in which the victims were found stuffed in a Volvo in Norview.
In July 1990, Gomez pleaded guilty to capital murder in the death of Llewelyn E. John and to three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of three teenagers. Three months later, Gomez was sentenced to life for John's death; the sentencings for the other murders were put under advisement until Thursday.
As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.
The murders occurred March 28, 1989, in a unit in the now-demolished Lakeland Apartments complex. Gomez wanted to eliminate John, the alleged Guyanan gang leader, after learning that John was making more money than he was paying his workers, police said.
Gomez confessed to hiring a hit man to kill John, 30. The three youths - Roberto and Edward Delgado and Sean Kendricks - were on their first drug run with John from New York when they were killed because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The case was the worst mass slaying in Norfolk in at least the past 16 years. Three days after the crime, the bodies were found in the back seat and trunk of a silver Volvo sedan, parked in the quiet east Norview neighborhood a few blocks from Lakeland.
Thursday's sentencing agreement included the provision that Gomez would testify against the alleged hit man, Daniel Brown. The problem is that Brown has been at large since 1990.
Brown was originally charged in the murders, but then released in October 1989 for lack of evidence. A year later, he was reindicted. By then, he had disappeared.
Gomez's testimony would have been the strongest evidence against Brown. In 1989, he apparently refused to testify. By 1990, he had changed his mind, police privately said at the time.
Gomez and John had rented an apartment at 6402 Merle Ave. and used it as a drug distribution center, court records state. Gomez, then 19, was John's right-hand man, overseeing four to five dealers.
John reportedly brought a kilogram of cocaine from New York to Norfolk every two weeks. He bought the drug for $18,000, and the gang sold it in Lakeland and the Norview area for up to $95,000, police said.
Anthony Bernard Hyslop, a lookout involved in the killings, was sentenced in August 1990 to 89 years in prison.
KEYWORDS: MURDER TRIAL PLEA BARGAIN by CNB