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

DATE: SATURDAY, June 23, 1990                   TAG: 9006230309
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By NEAL THOMPSON NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SERVING OF SENTENCE ORDERED IN ROAD DEATH

David Benson, a college student from Roanoke, must begin serving four years for a Floyd County manslaughter conviction and will not be able to return to school to play football in August as he had hoped.

A judge ruled Friday in Floyd County Circuit Court that Benson already had received special treatment from the court and he should "pull his time like a man," said Roanoke County Commonwealth's Attorney Skip Burkart, who was special prosecutor in the case.

Benson pleaded guilty last September to charges of manslaughter and driving under the influence when his car was involved in a head-on collision on U.S. 221 on March 12, 1989.

J.C. Waters, 17, a student at Floyd County High School, died in the wreck.

Circuit Judge Kenneth Devore sentenced Benson to four years but allowed him to finish the school year at Lenoir-Rhyne College in North Carolina if he served time on weekends and vacations during the year.

Then Benson was to surrender when school ended in May to begin his four years.

Benson lived up to that agreement and entered Floyd County Jail last month.

But then Benson's attorney, Andrew Davis of Bedford, told Burkart that Benson planned to go back to school in August and return to jail on weekends and vacations until completing school in May 1991.

Burkart said that was not the original agreement.

At Friday's hearing, he found out that Benson had been elected captain of the football team and had gotten an $8,000 football scholarship. Benson wanted to go back to play football and finish his last year of school, Burkart said.

Devore told Benson that he could always finish school when he got out of jail, Burkart said, but J.C. Waters never would have that chance.

According to testimony in previous hearings, Benson reached for a cassette tape and veered into the opposite lane on a winding portion of U.S. 221, striking Waters' car head-on. Tests showed a blood-alcohol level of 0.12 percent, making it the second time in a year Benson had been found to be driving under the influence.

Burkart was assigned as special prosecutor when Floyd County Commonwealth's Attorney Warren Lineberry disqualified himself because Waters was his secretary's brother.

by CNB