DATE: Friday, November 21, 1997             TAG: 9711210649

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS

                                            LENGTH:  107 lines

VIRGINIA

Six students receive

$5,000 settlements

for strip search

STANARDSVILLE - Six of the approximately 50 boys who were strip searched by William Monroe High School officials have been paid $5,000 in a settlement with the Greene County School Board.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia said Thursday that the parents of at least two other students who were searched have inquired about taking legal action, and more may do likewise.

``Because we decided to take this case, we feel obligated to any student who was searched,'' said Kent Willis, state ACLU director. ``Whether it was one or 40, we will represent them if they want us to.''

The boys were forced last May to strip to their underpants after a student reported $100 missing from his wallet. The money was never found.

``This was an illegal search of precisely the kind that the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution was intended to prevent,'' said Steve Rosenfeld, the Charlottesville lawyer who represented the youths.

``This . . . was not a carefully conceived search of a main suspect or two, it was a witch hunt. In addition to being a humiliating experience for the students, it also contradicted every lesson the schools have them learn about the Bill of Rights.''

School Superintendent Raymond Dingeldine said the School Board agreed to the settlement on Nov. 5 at the insistence of its insurance company. He said the boys consented to the search, and others who refused were not disciplined.

``This situation illustrates how schools today are being threatened with lawsuits and being dragged into court when school employees have acted in a sincere spirit of trying to maintain orderly and safe schools,'' he said.

Willis said school officials did little investigation before conducting the search. ``Apparently they just rounded up the students in the vicinity,'' he said.

Willis said conducting such a broad search is analogous to ``someone thinking there might be a drug dealer in the neighborhood and they go busting down every door.''

Brandon Hawkins, a 16-year-old sophomore who was among the six who were searched and sought legal help, said the search ``made me uncomfortable.''

He said the school apologized to his mother, but ``I'd like them to apologize to me.''

Self-inflicted gun wound

killed boy, not trooper

MONTEREY, Tenn. - A 16-year-old Virginia boy who was shot after pulling a gun on a state trooper killed himself with a shot to the head, the state medical examiner said.

Brandon Frame originally was thought to have been killed by shots fired by the trooper. But Dr. Charles Harlan said Wednesday that the death was a suicide.

Harlan said the trooper fired six shots Tuesday that hit the boy, including three to the chest. But he was ``100 percent sure'' the fatal wound was a close-contact head shot. That means the gun was pressed directly to his head, Harlan said.

Frame, from the Richmond suburb of Powhatan County, was stopped for speeding along Interstate 40 in what was apparently his father's Jeep Grand Cherokee. Highway Patrolman Anthony Tollett put the boy and a 14-year-old girl riding with Frame into the trooper's patrol car.

Frame reportedly jumped out of the car and pulled a gun when he heard on Tollett's radio that he was wanted for questioning in the shooting death of his father back in Virginia.

Tennessee Highway Patrol spokesman Anthony Kimbrough said Tollett ``saw the individual reach down into his waist area and saw his arm swing out with the weapon. And that's when the trooper fired.''

The boy's father, James H. Frame Jr., was killed shortly before midnight Sunday at his home. The girl was listed as missing from her home in nearby Goochland County.

``We believe (the boy) left his father's home, drove to . . . pick up this girl, then went back to his home, then drove to a relative's house and started west sometime after that,'' District Attorney Bill Gibson said. ``We believe he had plans to drive to California.''

The boy is suspected of shooting his father, said Powhatan Detective Greg A. Neal.

The girl, whose identity was not released, was taken to a Tennessee juvenile detention center, where she remained Wednesday. She is not a suspect in the death of the boy's father.

Tollett was placed on administrative leave with pay.

NORTHERN

Congress won't give Fairfax

3,200-acre Lorton prison

FAIRFAX - An effort to get Congress to give the 3,200-acre Lorton Correctional Complex site to Fairfax County has failed.

Several members of Congress objected to the plan proposed by Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, R-11th.

``It just wasn't workable,'' said John Hishta, Davis' chief of staff.

Among the opponents were Rep. Charles H. Taylor, R-N.C., who sent a letter to fellow legislators entitled ``Stop the Lorton Land Grab!''

Also raising objections was Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio.

``You would have been giving the land over without going through the screening process - and for free,'' said Glenn spokesman Jack Sparks.

The D.C.-operated prison is scheduled to close by 2001. Most of the property will go to the Interior Department, which has said it has no interest in creating a new park on the site.

Various proposals for the property include a huge commercial and residential complex, a 47,000-seat baseball stadium to attract a Major League team to northern Virginia, and leaving it open for public use.

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