THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 7, 1997 TAG: 9701070211
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON FRANK, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 69 lines
A 14-year-old boy charged with killing his half-sister with a shotgun blast to the head in September was removed from the Virginia Beach Jail on Monday after a sheriff's deputy testified that the teen-ager had been assaulted several times while incarcerated.
Circuit Judge E.W. Hanson Jr. ordered that Zackary Anthony Carter be returned to the Tidewater Detention Home until he can be tried for first-degree murder.
Carter is the first juvenile in Virginia Beach to be tried for murder under a new state statute that requires juveniles 14 and older be treated as adults for violent felonies.
Carter is charged with shooting 8-year-old Cierra Rose Carter in an upstairs bedroom of their home in the 800 block of Ringfield Road in the Ocean Lakes subdivision. Cierra Carter was a fourth-grader at Strawbridge Elementary School. Her brother, who is known by Anthony, was an eighth-grader at Princess Anne Middle School.
The shooting occurred Sept. 10 between 4 p.m., when the two arrived home from school, and about 6 p.m.
At a preliminary hearing Dec. 19, Juvenile Court Judge Woodrow Lewis sent first-degree charges against Carter to a grand jury and ordered him held in the Virginia Beach city jail to await trial March 19.
Before the preliminary hearing, Carter was being held in the Tidewater Detention Home.
On Monday, Sheriff's Deputy James R. Willard testified that during routine examinations at the jail, Carter was found to have at least one facial bruise. Carter told guards that he had been assaulted several times by a number of inmates just before Christmas and during the week after Christmas.
Willard said Carter was removed from his holding cell, examined by a doctor and then placed in an isolation cell with another juvenile until Monday. Willard gave no other details about the assaults.
Two staff members of the Tidewater Detention Home testified that Carter was a model inmate at the home during his earlier stay there and would be welcomed back.
Carter, they said, was achieving excellent grades while at the home and had had no serious confrontations with others. He was never violent, they said.
``He displayed age-appropriate, typical, 14-year-old male behavior,'' said Martha C. Lugar, a staff member at the detention facility.
But Laura Hall, a case worker with Virginia Beach Child Protective Services, said Carter displayed violent behavior with his biologicalmother before coming to Hampton Roads to live at his father's home, where Cierra Carter was killed.
During one confrontation with his biological mother, Carter ``came out like a caged animal,'' Hall said. Carter, Hall said, kicked and punched his mother and had to be forcibly subdued. He later cut through a window screen and ran away from home.
Police investigator Doug Zebley also testified Monday that during a three-hour interview with Carter the day after the murder, the 14-year-old ``told me in fact he shot his sister.''
Public Defender Melinda Glaubke said that returning Carter to jail would ``put his safety at risk'' and that his performance at detention facility from September until Dec. 19 proved that he could be safely held there until his trial.
``It is unusual that people on the staff at the Tidewater Detention Home would come forward and testify,'' Glaubke said. ``They are willing to have Anthony back. They want him back.'' ILLUSTRATION: Carter had been found to have at least one facial
bruise, the deputy said; Carter was moved to a youth facility.
KEYWORDS: JUVENILE MURDER ASSAULT