Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, August 21, 1993 TAG: 9308210112
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RON BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Prosecutors say he is simply a church deacon turned bad.
Authorities say Smith cooly rounded up his .357 Magnum last month and visited his minister before gunning down his wife and another man.
Friday, murder and malicious wounding charges against Smith were certified to the grand jury.
Sandra Smith, 43, an animal control officer for Roanoke, was dead and lying in a pool of blood in the den when police officers arrived at her Andrews Road house in Northwest Roanoke around midnight on July 28.
Nearby lay her friend, Edwin Roger Hairston Jr., 42, bleeding from a couple of gunshot wounds and pleading for help.
"He said he'd been shot and needed medical assistance," said Roanoke Police Officer E.P. Charles, who testified at Friday's preliminary hearing.
Hairston was still recuperating from his wounds and couldn't attend Friday's hearing.
Officer Roger Fuller also had been dispatched to the Andrews Avenue house the night of the shooting.
But as he walked through the door, his sergeant dispatched him to another call on Leon Street Northwest - to the house of the Rev. Robert Ingram of Bible Way Pentecostal Church.
As Ingram opened his door, Fuller noticed a .357-caliber Magnum lying on a coffee table and James Smith standing in the room.
Fuller said Smith started telling him how he'd gone to the Elizabeth Arden factory that night to pick up his daughter and found out that she'd left earlier with her mother. He then drove to the house on Andrews Road, Smith said.
He knocked on the door and was let in. He walked down to the den, where he saw Hairston lying on the couch with his shoes off.
Soon, Sandra Smith joined them, but was paying attention to Hairston, not Smith.
"He said he had little part in the conversation," Fuller testified Friday. "He said he felt like a piece of furniture in the room."
Fuller said Smith went home to get his revolver, then returned to Ingram's house to discuss his ill feelings toward his wife and how he felt like killing her.
"I'm gonna bust a cap on her," Ingram remembered James Smith threatening, using a street phrase for shooting someone.
Fuller said Ingram was in shock and didn't know whether to believe James Smith. After he left, Ingram prayed and told his wife to call 911.
The call came too late.
James Smith told police he returned to the house on Andrews Road and again was let in. He walked to den, where Hairston was still on the couch.
"OK, Buddy, get your shoes on," Smith remembered telling Hairston before Sandra Smith tried to intercede.
Smith told police he remembered turning the gun on her and starting to pull the trigger.
"I continued to pull the trigger until it clicked," Fuller recalled him saying.
Chief Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Betty Jo Anthony argued that James Smith deserved no bond because he had been convicted of an unlawful wounding 10 years ago.
Anthony said Smith also had two more assault convictions and a history of abusing his relatives that included stabbing, beatings and breaking arms.
"He's a man with a history of violence," Anthony said. "Especially to those close to him."
Judge Edward Kidd agreed and refused to allow Smith to bond out of jail.
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by CNB