ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, January 30, 1996 TAG: 9601300074
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: PULASKI
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
After two hours of testimony on Monday, a Pulaski judge certified a second degree-murder charge against a Wytheville man to the grand jury.
The murder charge against Tony Wayne Covey, 26, was just one of the charges against different people that came out of a convoluted confrontation in downtown Pulaski last May.
The confrontation, which involved a knife and a baseball bat, left Windle Jackson Edwards Jr. dead and pitted brothers against brothers.
At no time during Monday's hearing did a motive for the fight come out. And in the end, a judge sent all of the charges on to a grand jury to consider for indictments.
It took a couple of hours Monday to sort through the bat-and-knife fight that happened in the early morning hours when Windle and Terrance Wade Edwards, Charles T. Crowder III, and two other friends met up with brothers Tony and David Eugene Covey.
During Monday's hearing in Pulaski County General District Court, Crowder testified that he, the Edwards brothers and two others drove to Pulaski from Draper to pick up the wife of one of the passengers outside a market on Valley Street.
When they got there, Windle Edwards opened the rear passenger door to step out of the car, and David Covey hit him "right square in the back of the head" with a bat, Crowder testified.
Crowder got out of the car and saw his friend and David Covey struggling for the bat.
That's when Tony Covey stabbed Crowder in the side with a small pocket knife, Crowder testified. He yelled out a warning, but Tony Covey stabbed Windle Edwards three or four times, too, Crowder told the judge.
Crowder said he tried to talk to Edwards, who fell, face-first, into a mud puddle and lay gasping on the ground. Then he called 911.
Edwards, 31, of Dublin, died several hours later at a hospital.
"He hung on til I got there. I got to tell him I loved him," his mother, Judy Collins, said before the hearing got under way. "He got saved before he died and that's the main thing. I don't think I could take it if I hadn't known that God saved him."
Windle Edwards, "Bunny" to friends and family, worked in construction and was a father of three.
When police were first investigating the case, they said it appeared to be the result of a domestic dispute between Johnny Pope, a passenger in the car that night, and his wife. Police said then they believed Pope and his estranged wife brought the Coveys and Edwards to a meeting they had arranged.
Crowder said he only knew the group was driving to Pulaski to pick up Pope's wife for a planned fish fry the next day.
During Monday's hearing another witness, Michelle Rochelle, testified that the noise of an argument awoke her last May and she watched from her son's bedroom window as two men fought.
Rochelle testified she saw Terrance Edwards beating Tony Covey with a baseball bat.
Terrance Edwards struck Covey about a half dozen times, then kicked him, jumped on him and stabbed him, she testified.
She said she did not see what happened before that.
His brother, Terrance, faces a charge of maliciously wounding Tony Covey.
Tony Covey was hospitalized in Roanoke for a stab wound and head trauma.
On Monday, Judge Ed Turner certified the second-degree murder charge against Tony Covey to the grand jury. Covey also is charged with maliciously wounding Crowder.
The judge sent malicious wounding charges against Terrance Edwards and David Covey to the panel to consider for indictment.
LENGTH: Medium: 71 linesby CNB