Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 9, 1994                   TAG: 9402090208
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: CURRENT   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: By KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD                                LENGTH: Medium

1 RU GREEK FOUND GUILTY OF BREAKING INTO APARTMENT

The six Chi Phi members were accused of breaking into the woman's bedroom to avenge an earlier altercation between one of their group, Nathaniel R. Reed III, and the woman's boyfriend.

Reed was found guilty Tuesday in Radford Circuit Court of breaking and entering with intent to commit assault and two misdemeanor charges of assault and battery. He will be sentenced in March. Reed graduated from Radford in December.

But charges against the other five were dismissed because of questions about the way the victims went about identifying their alleged attackers: conducting their own investigation and then supplying names to authorities.

Reed was charged the night of the assaults. The other five were not charged until September.

Tasha Draskovic testified that Reed came to her Calhoun Street apartment looking for her two roommates. When she told Reed she did not know where they were and asked him to leave, Reed cursed her and began following her up the steps to the second floor of the apartment, Draskovic testified. Bradley Hutchinson, her boyfriend, came down the steps and the two men began scuffling, she testified.

Hutchinson carried Reed out the door and hit him once, according to the prosecution's evidence.

Draskovic and Hutchinson testified that about an hour later, they were awakened by footsteps. The bedroom door was crashed in, they said, and Reed and several other men came into the room and began attacking them.

But Reed testified he was assaulted after voluntarily leaving the apartment. He said Hutchinson hit him in the face, grabbed him by the neck and rammed his head into a car.

Reed said he was bleeding near his eye when he went back to a party where several people asked him what happened. A group of about 25 people went to Draskovic's apartment - some wanting revenge for Reed's beating and others who were under the mistaken belief they were following people to another party, according to testimony.

Reed said he did not encourage the group to seek revenge for him, telling them he would get a warrant for Hutchinson. The charge against Hutchinson was dismissed earlier in General District Court.

Reed testified he never re-entered the apartment and that he didn't see any of the five other defendants enter the apartment either. Testimony Tuesday indicated, however, that Reed was first in the door when the group broke in.

Draskovic and Hutchinson provided campus authorities and city police with the names of other people, identifying them as the people who broke into the apartment, crashed in a bedroom door and repeatedly punched the couple as they lay in bed.

The five men cleared Tuesday were: Brett F. Candler, 22; Steve L. May, 21; Jeff D. Johnson, 20; Rodrigo H. Delcerro,19; and James C. Yerkes, 20. Delcerro is not enrolled at Radford this semester and Yerkes is now attending New River Community College.

Jimmy Turk, who represented the five men, argued that the evidence against his clients was weak. The five men were not charged until September, and only after Hutchinson had conducted his own investigation and provided police with the names of those people he believed had assaulted him. Hutchinson said he recognized the five men after seeing them around campus last fall.

Some of the five testified Tuesday that Hutchinson called and asked to meet with them about the assault. They said he didn't seem to believe them when they told him they had nothing to do with the attack.

Judge Duane Mink granted Turk's motion to strike the prosecution's evidence against his clients, agreeing there were problems with the identification process.