DATE: Friday, September 26, 1997            TAG: 9709260774

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:   29 lines

KILLER GETS 5 MORE YEARS FOR FELONY CHILD NEGLECT

Malcolm T. Ruffin, already convicted of murdering a woman who was nine months pregnant with his child, was given more jail time Thursday on another charge.

Ruffin was sentenced to five years with one year suspended in Chesapeake Circuit Court for felony child neglect. He left a 1-year-old child by the side of the road in Chesapeake in August 1996, shortly after murdering the girl's mother.

The maximum penalty for the neglect charge is five years.

Ruffin, 32, was sentenced to 30 years in prison in Prince George County in February for first-degree murder in the strangulation death of Antitca Hurt, who was pregnant with Ruffin's child.

Ruffin strangled Hurt after the two argued about the unborn child. He then then drove around the Colonial Heights area of Prince George County for 35 minutes without loosening the belt around her neck.

The murder took place in front of 1-year-old Jaliyuah Hurt. About six hours later, a motorist found the baby poised to crawl across Essex Street in the Essex Meadows neighborhood of Chesapeake.

Authorities estimated that the baby, who was found at 4 a.m., had been there for as long as two hours.

Ruffin was married to another woman and had two children.

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