Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 22, 1993 TAG: 9304220163
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium
Damonte DeCosta didn't actually hold the weapon - a BB gun altered to look like a 9mm semiautomatic - on the victim and didn't drive off in her $42,000 car, according to evidence at his Circuit Court trial Tuesday.
Instead, a 14-year-old accomplice did those things. The younger boy earlier was convicted as a juvenile of armed robbery and faces possible detention to age 21.
Patricia Boddy, 51, said she was preparing to put the key in the lock when a car pulled up behind hers in a shopping center parking lot Nov. 1. The younger teen got out and told her to give him the key, she said.
"I said, `You've got to be kidding.' I was stunned. He was just a young kid. I thought he wasn't serious," she testified. "Then he pulled out a dull grey gun with a long barrel."
She handed over the key and the boy drove off, with DeCosta following in another car the boys had borrowed. The boys later picked up two girls and a 10-year-old boy and went joy riding in Boddy's car.
That evening, a Norfolk police officer spotted the car and recognized it as stolen. When he tried to pull it over, the car sped off.
The ensuing chase went through residential neighborhoods at speeds reaching 60 mph. It ended when the stolen car ran a red light, hit several other cars and flipped on its side.
Nine people were hurt, three of them seriously, in the accident that involved four cars. Detective Pat Lewis said DeCosta confessed while sitting handcuffed to a stretcher in a hospital emergency room.
"He wasn't crying," Lewis said. "He was sitting calmly, not visibly upset. He had a noncaring attitude, like it was no big deal."
DeCosta will be sentenced June 2.
by CNB