Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, December 16, 1993 TAG: 9312160129
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE:
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
But the jury, after deliberating about 45 minutes Wednesday, found McGlothlin, 19, guilty of aggravated malicious wounding, shooting into an occupied vehicle and using a firearm to commit a felony.
The jury set his sentence at life plus 12 years in prison. They also fined him $100,000. He will be formally sentenced after a pre-sentence report is prepared by a probation officer.
McGlothlin was 18 in November 1992 when he was charged, along with another man, with shooting Curtis Clayton Sifford, 58, a Lynchburg Foundry worker. According to authorities, Sifford was unlucky enough to become the key player in two young men's apparent plan to see what it would be like to shoot - and possibly kill - someone.
Sifford, a random target, was shot in the face with a 12-gauge shotgun as he drove down U.S. 11 near Fairlawn on his way to work at about 4 a.m. on Nov. 14, 1992.
McGlothlin, of Bertha Street, and David Allen Lawson, 22, of Bob White Boulevard, were indicted on seven charges, including malicious wounding, using a firearm to commit a felony, shooting into an occupied vehicle and conspiracy.
Authorities say the two went to the Dublin Hardee's and followed Sifford after he drove away from the drive-through window.
As the truck Lawson was driving pulled along side Sifford's pickup, Sifford turned, looked and was shot.
Sifford managed to continue driving until he reached McDonald's in Fairlawn and another motorist helped him.
Sifford's lip and lower face are still numb and part of his arm, used to help repair his face, has lost strength and mobility.
Earlier this year, Lawson _ who told authorities he drove the truck and another man with him shot Sifford - pleaded guilty in Pulaski County Circuit Court to malicious wounding, shooting into an occupied vehicle and using a firearm while committing aggravated malicious wounding.
McGlothlin told the jury he was with Lawson at a party the night before the shooting and that the two decided to drive to Radford. But because he was drinking and also taking Xanax, McGlothlin said he has no memory of the rest of the evening.
McGlothlin said Lawson later told him he had shot someone.
"I was shocked," he said. "Someone tells you [that] you shot somebody and you don't remember, how else would you feel?"
McGlothlin testified he got rid of the shotgun several days later, dropping it into Claytor Lake.
He told the jury he confessed only because a deputy sheriff "kept on bugging me and bugging me," during questioning.
He said he told the investigator what Lawson had told McGlothlin he had done.
"I just blurted out whatever I could just to get him off my back."
He said letters to a girlfriend he wrote from jail that referred to "the night we did what we did," referred to what the press was reporting he and Lawson were accused of doing and also to shooting up drugs.
"I don't know if I done it or not," McGlothlin said, adding he was sorry for what had happened to Sifford.
McGlothlin denied that he and Lawson cooked up a plan to shoot someone just to see what it was like, though Lawson told Sheriff Ralph Dobbins that's what the two had decided.
In a videotaped interview, Lawson said he and McGlothlin didn't discuss what was going to happen as they sat outside the restaurant but "we knew what we was going to do . . . we was going to kill somebody."
by CNB