Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 14, 1990                   TAG: 9003143116
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CRACK DEALER GETS 17 YEARS IN KILLING OF TEEN

Robert Little, 20, received the sentence in Roanoke Circuit Court for the killing of Corey Ricardo Hancock, 19, last March.

Hancock was shot in the back as he stood in the middle of 25th Street Northwest - an area where crack was available for the asking - the night of last March 30 and wrangled over a few extra dollars he owed for a $25 rock of crack that Little had just sold him.

Little, who was 19 at the time, testified that he only wanted to scare Hancock when he fired a handgun in his direction.

"Corey was running around ripping people off, so we figured we would scare him to make him stop doing it," Little testified.

After being struck in the back, Hancock dived into the passenger window of a passing car and was taken to his home in the Hurt Park housing project, where he died a short time later.

Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Ann Hill asked that Little receive a maximum 22-year sentence for second-degree murder and use of a firearm.

"It all boils down to easy money at any cost," she said in describing Little's actions.

But Defense Attorney Ray Ferris asked Judge Diane Strickland to consider other factors - including his client's disadvantaged background, broken home and efforts to turn his life around through education and religion while in jail.

Strickland said that while the killing merited the maximum sentence, her hopes for Little's rehabilitation were the "sole consideration that gives this court pause."

Little had told authorities that his name was Robert Grant - an alias that was not discovered until shortly before he was to be sentenced Tuesday, when his mother showed up from his home state of Connecticut.

Little told authorities that he considered a one-time boyfriend of his mother, Robert Grant, to be more of a father figure than his true father.

Robert Grant, the man whom Little looked up to as a child, is now awaiting trial on drug charges in Roanoke.

Little testified that Grant persuaded him to get into the drug business, saying he would need the money to support two babies that Little was expecting from two girlfriends.

Working at a pizza parlor and making about $130 a week, Little testified that he saw a chance to make a lot more money a lot faster.

"I figured I could make that kind of money in a day instead of a week," he testified.

But since he has been in jail, Little said he has learned the evils of crack cocaine. While behind bars, he wrote a poem about the highly addictive drug, which he called "a girl named cocaine."

He read the poem in court Tuesday to Strickland.

"She made a lot of people rich and a lot of people poor; but whatever she did she made them want some more," one of the lines of the poem read.