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

DATE: SUNDAY, July 15, 1990                   TAG: 9007150153
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: E4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NORFOLK                                LENGTH: Medium

MAN HELD WITHOUT BOND IN DEATH OF RETARDED GIRL

"There is not a specific medical term for being scared to death . . . but that is exactly what happened to Jennifer Ball," Commonwealth's Attorney William Rutherford said Friday. "No one in this courtroom can imagine what this 14-year-old girl felt when she was removed from her little world" at the Holiday House, a Portsmouth home for profoundly handicapped children.

Rutherford's comment came at a preliminary hearing in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court. Jose Luis Vanegas, 28, of Rock Hill, S.C., is charged with murdering the child.

Vanegas sat silently during the hearing. Wearing arm and leg shackles, he showed no emotion when Judge Charles Poston ordered him held without bond to await his trial on a felony murder charge.

Rutherford said Vanegas is not being charged with capital murder because the prosecution has been unable to establish premeditation.

Vanegas was charged with murder in Norfolk because that is where the body was found. He faces preliminary hearing July 26 on the sexual assault and abduction charge in Portsmouth.

Jennifer disappeared from the Holiday House sometime after 7:25 p.m. June 19. Employees of the home testified Vanegas was at the home at the time of the disappearance.

Vanegas had first visited the home several years ago while serving in the U.S. Navy aboard the aircraft carrier Coral Sea. Employees testified he had returned several times in the past few years, and his help with the children was appreciated.

Vanegas was in Norfolk in June serving his two-week duty as a reservist.

Edna D. McCoy, a Holiday employee, said she saw Vanegas leaving one of the cottages carrying a patient. McCoy said she was sitting in an adjoining cottage with her back to the window when she had a premonition involving her husband, who had died in February.

"I heard his voice say, `Turn around.' I did and saw Jose was on the grass with one of the white clients in his arms," she said.

McCoy said she thought Vanegas had taken one of the children outside to play and was not alarmed because Vanegas "was a nice man, a nice person."

Several minutes later, another employee discovered Jennifer was missing from her bed and sounded the alarm.

The girl's body was discovered nearly 24 hours later beside a dead-end street, screened from a neighboring fast-food restaurant by a row of bushes in Norfolk.

Prosecutors presented a string of witnesses who portrayed Jennifer as a child who could neither walk nor talk and was unable to care for herself when she was taken June 19 from the Holiday House in Portsmouth.

The only way she could communicate was through "cooing," much like the sounds made by a baby before it begins to try to form words, said Rossalyn Brown, a language and speech pathologist who worked with the child.

Brown said the child could not hold her head up for more than a minute, and often went into seizures if she became excited or startled.

Before the body was discovered, Portsmouth officers arrested Vanegas at the Norfolk Naval Base and took him to Portsmouth police headquarters.

At first he denied knowing anything about the girl. Later he told Detective Allen Harvey he would help police locate the body.

He then told the officers, "I'll have to settle this with my God, which is your God," Harvey said.

The officers took Vanegas to several fast-food restaurants in Portsmouth looking for the girl. They then heard over the police radio that a body had been found across the river in Norfolk.

Harvey said as they drove up to the scene, Vanegas said, "That's the one, behind the bushes," and asked if the girl was all right. When later told Jennifer was dead, Vanegas began to cry, Harvey testified.

Medical examiner Dr. Faruk Presswalla said he was unable to pinpoint the cause of the girl's death beyond heart failure.

Presswalla said he was waiting for further tests to determine, if possible, the exact mechanism of the girl's death.