Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 1, 1991 TAG: 9102010561
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Leaving four guests in a basement recreation room, Smith went upstairs and returned a few minutes later with a gun in his hand, Leah Penn, one of the guests, testified Thursday.
Smith waved the gun at the group - which included his brother-in-law, William Wade Gibson, a city social services worker - and ordered them to leave, Penn said.
As the four were leaving, Smith followed them out to a side porch and fired two shots as they were getting into a car in the driveway of his home on Longmeadow Avenue Northwest, according to Penn.
Gibson, 34, was hit in the chest.
"I saw blood on his chest and I screamed: `Wade's been shot,'" Penn testified in Roanoke Circuit Court, where Smith, 51, is being tried on charges of killing Gibson.
While a clear motive did not emerge during the first day of the trial, Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Alice Ekirch told the jury that two witnesses - Penn and her boyfriend, Gus Cabbler - made it a "simple case" of murder.
But defense attorney BarryTatel suggested in his opening statements that the two witnesses were too intoxicated at the time to offer a credible version of what happened.
Tatel pointed to testimony showing that Smith's guests had spent the entire night drinking gin, smoking marijuana and snorting cocaine at his home.
However, R.S. Fuller, a Roanoke policeman who interviewed Penn at Lewis-Gale Hospital a few hours after the shooting, testified that she did not appear intoxicated.
Although both Penn and Cabbler identified Smith as the person who fired two shots - one into the air and a second at Gibson - neither was able to explain why the host of the party suddenly became so angry.
Keywords:
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by CNB