DATE: Tuesday, July 22, 1997                TAG: 9707220171

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 

                                            LENGTH:   81 lines

VIRGINIA [BRIEFS]

Northern

Teen goes on trial

for rest-stop murder

MANASSAS - Bobby Lee Durham Sr. already had handed over his wallet when a robber shot him and left him dying on the floor of a highway rest-stop bathroom, a prosecutor said Monday.

Andre V. Carter fired three times at Durham, although an accomplice had already taken Durham's wallet and the $150 it held, Prince William County Commonwealth's Attorney Paul Ebert told jurors at the start of Carter's trial.

``He said, `Please don't hurt me.' He begged them not to hurt him,'' Ebert said of Durham.

Carter, 18, is charged with capital murder and robbery in the Dec. 18 killing at a rest area on northbound Interstate 95 near Dale City. Durham and three relatives were returning home to Dover, Pa., from a trip to South Carolina when he was killed.

Carter and two friends, all from Spotsylvania County, are accused of ambushing Durham, 51, after he went into the deserted bathroom about 3 a.m. Durham's sister found him sprawled on the bathroom floor a short time later.

Carter could face the death penalty if convicted by a Circuit Court jury. One of his alleged accomplices, Michael T. Baggett, is expected to testify against Carter during the three- to four-day trial.

Baggett and co-defendant Khalif Rodriguez face first-degree murder trials next month.

Defense attorney Joseph Morrissey said Carter was drawn into the crime by his older, more experienced friends. Carter, then 17, was asleep in his car in the rest area parking lot when Baggett, 20, and Rodriguez, 18, ambushed Durham, Morrissey said.

Carter awoke when Baggett and Rodriguez burst into the car yelling about shooting someone, Morrissey said.

Morrissey said there is no physical evidence placing Carter in the bathroom where Durham died.

Prosecutors claim Carter told several people about the killing, and weeks afterward led an acquaintance to the stall where Durham died.

Attacker ambushes jogger,

beats her with a hammer

ARLINGTON - A woman jogging on a bike path was attacked by a man who jumped out of some bushes and beat her repeatedly with a hammer, police said.

The 26-year-old victim of Monday's attack was admitted to Arlington Hospital, where she was reported in stable condition. Police withheld her identity because the attack was considered a possible sexual assault, police said.

The attack occurred about 7 a.m. Although the assailant told the woman to be quiet, she screamed and tried to fend him off, said police spokesman Tom Bell.

Bell said the man fled after beating the woman and trying to drag her into the bushes. The woman managed to walk a few feet, but collapsed, and a passing bicyclist found her.

Police said the attack apparently was unprovoked, and the woman said she did not know the assailant.

Street dancer's ashes will

finally be laid to rest

CHARLOTTESVILLE - The remains of a street dancer whose ashes were abandoned on a utility box after he died in 1992 will be laid to rest this week.

Clarence ``Tippy'' Rhodes, who danced downtown for pocket change in the 1950s and '60s, will be buried Tuesday at Riverview Cemetery.

After Rhodes died five years ago, his cremated remains were taken by the Police Department when a relative apparently set them on a Virginia Power meter and then left town, said police Sgt. Jim Pace.

A records clerk came across Rhodes' ashes a few months ago when she took over supervision of storage in the basement of the police department and started doing an inventory.

Pace said police had tried without success to find relatives to take the remains when the department first got them. But Rhodes did not have children, and his wife died in the 1950s.

``He never used his hands or anything, just his feet,'' Helen Davis wrote in a 1979 article in ``Folklore and Folklife in Virginia.'' ``Sometimes he'd pretend his feet were running out from under him, and he'd say these funny things about the people watching so they'd start throwing money.'' MEMO: From wire reports

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