Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 14, 1990 TAG: 9003142989
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Other charges - including the attempted malicious wounding of an off-duty Roanoke police officer moonlighting as a mall security guard - were taken under advisement by Judge F.L. Hoback Jr. after a hearing in Roanoke Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court.
Witnesses testified that several pistol shots were fired in the mall parking lot after a fight broke out among three youths in a pack of about 25 teen-agers that had gathered near the Mind Boggle video game arcade. No one was injured.
Two 16-year-olds from Northwest Roanoke, who are not being identified because of their age, were charged with brandishing guns at a third teen-ager and then firing shots in the parking lot as they were chased by security guards and police officers.
While there have been complaints by the Roanoke NAACP that mall security guards often target blacks in dispersing crowds and responding to disorders, testimony Tuesday revealed no racial overtones in the shooting the night of Feb. 24.
Instead, court officials said the case illustrates an apparent trend in which a growing number of Roanoke teens seem to have guns - and are more than willing to use them.
"I think that kids have gone from just talking tough to being tough," said Wanda DeWease, an assistant commonwealth's attorney who prosecuted the teens.
"They like to display a macho image and now they're acting it out in reality," DeWease said. "And it's a dangerous game."
After more than four hours of often conflicting testimony by teen-agers who witnessed the fight, no clear motive emerged for what mall officials have called the most serious criminal offense in the shopping center's history.
"He just kept staring at me," a teen-ager involved in the ruckus said of one of the defendants, when asked to explain how the fight started.
"[The defendant] approached me like he was going to do something, so I hit him first. . . . A little brawl started. . . . He pulled a gun out and said: `I'm going to kill you, boy.' "
That was when the fight, which had started next to the Mind Boggle arcade, moved outside to the parking lot, the teen-ager testified.
S.M. Pendleton, a Roanoke police officer who was working that night as a security guard, said he was following the group outside when he heard up to eight gunshots. At least a dozen teens who had gone outside to watch what they thought would be a fistfight dove to the pavement as gunfire broke out.
As he stepped outside, Pendleton saw two youths carrying guns running from the area, he testified.
As Pendleton chased one of the teen-agers, the youth turned and fired a shot in his direction. Ducking behind a parked car, Pendleton heard another shot.
The youth then continued to run across the mall parking lot, but later dropped his gun after being confronted by police. He was arrested seconds later after another brief chase. The other teen-ager ducked into the Thalhimers store, blended into the crowd and escaped, Pendleton testified.
By the time police caught up with the youth several days later, he was a suspect in an another shooting - plus a third incident in which a youth was threatened at gunpoint by a passing motorist on Ferncliff Avenue Northwest.
Two days after the mall shooting, a youth who was involved in the fight but not charged reported that a shot was fired at his home in Northwest Roanoke from a passing car. No one was injured.
And the next day, Pendleton was on patrol when he spotted a car matching the description of the one from which shots were fired. As he approached the car, it sped off - leaving behind a teen in a second car who told police that a passenger in the car had just brandished a handgun at him.
When police stopped and searched the car minutes later, they found a .357-Magnum under the driver's seat. The 16-year-old was charged with brandishing a weapon, shooting at the house the day before, and with several offenses stemming from the mall shooting.
Testimony showed that the youth stole the gun from the bedroom closet of his parents' house before running away in January. He was convicted of petty larceny in that offense.
Defense attorneys Robert Rider and Ray Byrd asked that the charges against the two teens be dismissed, arguing there was insufficient evidence. But Hoback convicted the youths of all charges except two felony counts of attempted malicious wounding, which he took under advisement until a later hearing.
Detective C.J. Goens of the Police Department's Youth Bureau testified that one of the youths told him he fired shots into the air in the mall's parking lot in an attempt to summon another youth back into the fight.
"He said he wanted to fight him man to man," Goens testified.
by CNB