Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 2, 1994 TAG: 9401020013
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: HARRISONBURG LENGTH: Short
"I'd like to think the things that happened this year in this area were just isolated incidents, but I have to be realistic," Harrisonburg Police Chief Donald Harper said. "The fact is that juvenile crime is a growing problem across the country, and this area is no exception."
Of the seven slayings in the region during the year, two were committed by children.
On Jan. 22, five teen-agers drove to a grocery store in Harrisonburg to steal beer.
Before entering the store, Russell J. Tross, then 16, put a .25-caliber handgun in his pants pocket.
Store manager Stephen L. Daniel, 40, stopped Tross and Tross shot him in the face. Daniel died the next day.
Tross, now 17, was convicted Dec. 10 in Rockingham County Circuit Court of capital murder. A jury recommended he serve a life sentence.
In September, Marilyn Stearn Fries, 35, was found fatally stabbed in her home near Linville. Her daughters, Camellia, then 13, and Stephanie, then 12, and and Stephanie's boyfriend, Shawn Roadcap, then 14, were charged with the murder of the girls' mother.
During a closed trial in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court on Dec. 1, the confession of one of the children incriminated all of them and led to a finding of "not innocent" against all three defendants.
Because all were under the age of 15 at the time of the crime, state law bars them from incarceration in a juvenile detention center beyond their 21st birthdays.
by CNB