ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, July 20, 1996 TAG: 9607220051
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
AT LEAST SIX INCIDENTS, including the rape of a teen, have been reported in Old Southwest since March.
One day after a newspaper article described a series of attacks on women in Old Southwest last month, Roanoke police received an anonymous call.
The tip led them to Ronnie Lee Howard, a 22-year-old man who had raised the suspicions of some residents by hanging around an Elm Avenue apartment building and peering through windows.
On Friday, a judge ruled there was probable cause to support charges that Howard abducted two women - holding them briefly at knifepoint, then letting them go when they screamed - and broke into a third woman's apartment in separate incidents June14.
Since March, there have been at least six reports of attacks on women in Old Southwest, including the rape of a 17-year-old girl and two incidents in which an intruder broke into apartments while women slept and confronted them in their bedrooms.
After a preliminary hearing in Roanoke General District Court, Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Gerald Teaster declined to say whether Howard is a suspect in the other attacks.
Police say they have questioned Howard about other crimes, but the detective who interrogated him was not called to testify Friday. Since Howard was arrested June 26, there have been no reports of similar attacks in Old Southwest, according to Maj. J.L. Viar.
In testimony Friday, Rosa Lee Fitzgerald said she was leaving her apartment in the 100 block of Elm Avenue shortly after 8 a.m. June 14 on her way to work when a man grabbed her from behind and held what felt like a knife to her throat.
"I just kept screaming because he scared me so bad I couldn't do nothing but scream," Fitzgerald testified. The man tried to pull Fitzgerald back into her apartment building, but made no effort to rob her.
"He wasn't after my pocketbook or nothing. ... He was after me," she said. As she continued to scream, Fitzgerald said, the man "finally turned me loose" and fled.
When police showed Fitzgerald a photographic lineup after receiving the anonymous tip, she identified Howard as her assailant. She remembered seeing him hanging around her Elm Avenue apartment.
"He always sneaked around," she testified. "He was never out in the open where people could see him. It was like he was hiding; that's the way he was."
Later the same day, another woman was attacked in a nearby apartment building on Elm Avenue. Betty Otey said a man grabbed her from behind as she was entering her apartment, held a knife to her throat and told her to let him in the apartment.
Otey said the man fled when she screamed. Later that day, another woman returned to her Elm Avenue apartment and found that about $2,000 worth of jewelry had been taken by a burglar who apparently got inside by cutting a window screen.
The following week, after an article about the attacks was published in The Roanoke Times, an anonymous call led police to an Elm Avenue apartment where Howard was staying with a woman. Not knowing Howard's name at the time, police did some research on the woman who rented the apartment and found that she had filed charges against Howard.
After arresting Howard on a charge of failing to appear in court on an unrelated matter, officers searched the apartment and found jewelry that had been taken in the earlier break-in, police said. Howard was charged with grand larceny and breaking and entering. After Otey and Fitzgerald identified him from photographic lineups, he was charged with two counts of abduction.
All four felony charges were certified to a grand jury by Judge William Broadhurst. Howard, who did not testify Friday, was returned to the Roanoke City Jail after the hearing.
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