THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, March 25, 1996 TAG: 9603250047
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 157 lines
Royale Stewart was on a home pass from the Truxton-Paige Group Home when, prosecutors say, he rode to a 7-Eleven with two friends and shot Kevin Gallegos as he talked on a pay phone outside.
The woman on the other end of the phone heard Gallegos say: ``I'm sorry, I don't have any money.'' Then came the gunfire.
After the shooting, Gallegos ran inside the store, where he collapsed and died from a gunshot to the chest. He was 29.
Stewart, then 16, was charged with capital murder and released on bond. Shortly afterward, prosecutors say, he returned to the store and threatened to kill a witness. Stewart's bond was revoked, and he was returned to the Norfolk City Jail.
It was February 1995.
In jail, Stewart plotted to find a way out of his problems, prosecutors say. He talked about getting rid of Gerald Crandle, one of the two other men allegedly involved in the fatal shooting - a man who could testify against him, authorities have said.
Prosecutors, who already were seeking the death penalty against Stewart for Gallegos' death, earlier this month won an indictment of Stewart in Crandle's murder - a killing, authorities say, that Stewart orchestrated from behind bars.
Stewart, who allegedly plotted the killing between April 1 and Sept. 29, 1995, also was indicted on charges of bribery, solicitation to commit perjury and conspiracy, and a firearms charge.
Today, Stewart will appear in Circuit Court for a series of motions that could determine what evidence can be used against him at trial.
During a hearing last month to determine whether Stewart should be tried as an adult, his lawyer, Jon Babineau, argued that Stewart was in the Norfolk jail when Crandle, 20, was killed.
``These are very serious charges, there's no question,'' Babineau told the judge. ``But we're not dealing with a person who is out pulling the trigger. We're dealing with a person who was in the jail locked up.''
Babineau's appeal was unsuccessful. Circuit Judge Charles E. Poston, in deciding to transfer the case from juvenile to adult court, said Stewart had the benefit of most of the significant rehabilitation programs available through the juvenile court.
``It would be a useless gesture in my opinion to try anything else,'' Poston said. ``Age makes it unlikely that there can be any kind of rehabilitative effect by keeping him in the juvenile system.''
Prosecutors had lost their case against a third co-defendant, Ocie Wilson, then 23. He had not confessed, and prosecutors didn't have enough evidence against him. But Crandle, who faced a first-degree murder charge, admitted his role and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors by testifying against Stewart.
Jail informants told police that Stewart stayed in constant communication with Wilson while he was locked up, calling him several times a day.
At one point, Stewart told a fellow inmate at the jail that he had the perfect plan to get rid of his co-defendant to keep him from testifying against him.
``He stated that he would get out on bond and him and his boy, Ocie, would get Gerald . . . he'd have somebody come up and attempt to rob them and at that point the robber would be instructed to shoot and kill Gerald and to shoot him (Stewart). . . in his right leg,'' testified Joseph Lynn Francis, then an inmate at the jail.
Francis said he and Stewart had a lengthy discussion about the best place to be shot, with Francis telling him he didn't think there was a good place to be shot. Stewart was adamant that the right leg was the best place, Francis said.
``The whole plot for him to be shot in the leg was for the whole robbery attempt to look authentic when your co-defendant gets killed here beside you; in order to make it look authentic, he needed to be shot in the leg,'' Francis said.
Stewart never got the chance to put his plan into action - he was never released on bond.
On July 27, however, Gerald Crandle was found with two gunshot wounds to his head. He still had money and was wearing expensive jewelry, making robbery an unlikely motive. The watch on his wrist apparently was smashed as he fell to the ground; it had stopped at 10:29 p.m. He had last been seen with Wilson shortly after 10 p.m., authorities said.
On the day before Crandle's death, Stewart had told fellow inmate Cedric Cochran, ``A dead man can't tell nobody s---,'' Cochran testified in a December, 1995, hearing.
Stewart also had asked Cochran to wake him when the noon news came on the next day.
``When I woke up around 1, he told me Jerry was dead,'' Cochran testified. ``I said, `No, Jerry ain't dead. No.' He said, `Yeah, Jerry dead.' He was smiling.''
Stewart also said that he wouldn't have to worry about Crandle testifying against him anymore, that the commonwealth wouldn't have a case against him without Crandle.
After Crandle's death, prosecutors got authorization to wiretap conversations between Stewart at the jail and an apartment on West 40th Street where Wilson was staying. The wiretaps yielded about 54 cassette tapes over three weeks, now part of the commonwealth's case. Their contents have not been made public.
Wilson has been indicted on charges of murder, conspiracy to commit murder and use of a firearm in Crandle's death. Stewart is being held in the Richmond jail for security reasons.
When Malinda Gallegos heard that Crandle had been killed, she said she immediately suspected his friends and co-defendants.
She wonders how a 16-year-old could kill her husband, and then conspire to kill his own friend. She struggles to describe her reaction to watching the 7-Eleven videotape that recorded the final minutes of her husband's life after he collapsed in the store.
``You hate it because he's alone, you're watching him die, and there's nothing you can do,'' she said recently at her Hampton home. ``It makes it very fresh and very real. . . . You hear him moaning. You hear the lady behind the counter screaming, `They shot my customer'. . . and yelling for someone to call an ambulance.''
Gallegos said she watched as the co-defendants watched the video during an earlier court hearing.
She said they showed ``no emotion. It's like it was just a show on television.''
When Stewart was first questioned in Gallegos' killing on Feb. 10, 1995, at the 7-Eleven, he denied involvement. Later, he gave an account of what happened: When the three pulled up to the store, in the 4000 block of Hampton Blvd., Crandle was driving, Wilson was in the front seat and Stewart was in the back. Wilson saw a man get out of a pick-up with something in his back pocket and decided he looked like he had a lot of money. Wilson told him to get the money and they would divide it three ways.
Stewart then put on a green sweatshirt. Wilson gave him a gun and told him the safety was on. Stewart approached the man and tried to rob him, but the man said he didn't have any money. The would-be victim rushed him, and as the victim tightly gripped the gun, it went off, Stewart said in a statement to police.
``I thought it was on safety,'' Stewart said. ``It was kind of an accident. I didn't mean to shoot him. . . . They're going to lock me up and throw away the key.''
In the statement, Stewart said he ran back to the car after the shooting and Wilson and Crandle laughed at him. He then went to his girlfriend's house, where he and his girlfriend cried and prayed together.
Stewart has a long history of trouble with the law. Including charges related to Gallegos' death, his juvenile record lists 41 charges, although some were dismissed.
He was committed to the Department of Youth and Family Services in November 1993 for carjacking and for use of a firearm. He also was charged with discharging a firearm in a public place, an offense handled in juvenile court in February 1995.
He was convicted of several felony charges and committed to the Department of Youth and Family Services in February 1992. The commitment was suspended and Stewart was placed in the court's Intensive Probation Program in April 1992. He was recommitted by the Virginia Beach Court Service Unit in November 1992 and by the Norfolk courts in December 1992 and went to what was formerly called Barrett Learning Center. He stayed there until Jan. 13, 1994, when he was paroled.
In November 1994, he was went to live at the Truxton-Paige Group Home, three months before Kevin Gallegos was killed. ILLUSTRATION: B\W photos
Kevin Gallegos
Gerald Crandle
KEYWORDS: MURDER JUVENILE ARREST SHOOTING by CNB