ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, August 28, 1996 TAG: 9608280077
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHARLESTON, S.C.
SOURCE: The Washington Post
On the evening of March 12, 1992, Citadel Cadet Berra Lee Byrd Jr. was walking in a parking lot near some of the military school's dormitories when he crumpled to the ground, shot in the chest. Crying for help, Byrd struggled toward a nearby mess hall before anyone came to his aid.
After police failed to find any hint of how the black cadet had been shot, the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, citing a pattern of violence against blacks here, turned to the FBI.
Tuesday, after nearly 1,500 interviews, the FBI said it had finally solved the case. One of Byrd's former classmates acknowledged in a letter to a local newspaper that he accidentally fired the shot that nearly took Byrd's life.
``The last four and a half years of living with this secret and the pain I caused Berra, his family and The Citadel have been unbearable,'' George F. Cormeny III, a 1994 Citadel graduate, wrote in his letter published Tuesday in the Post and Courier. Cormeny said he had fired a 9mm handgun out his fourth-floor barracks window believing the weapon was empty.
The case broke Friday when Cormeny's former Citadel roommate spoke to FBI agents in Maryland, a law enforcement source said.
Cormeny, described by law enforcement sources as a divinity student in a northern state, could not be contacted. Byrd also could not be reached for comment.
In his nine-paragraph letter, Cormeny described the shooting as ``the worst day of my life'' and told how he panicked after he saw the injured Byrd struggling across the parking lot screaming for help.
``I waited in my room for the expectant rush of people,'' he wrote. ``No one came. Inexplicably, no one had heard the explosion. ... I panicked. I have no excuse, only an explanation.
``That panic led me to make the most foolish decision yet in a long line of foolish decisions. I did not come forward,'' he wrote.
Byrd, 21 at the time of the shooting, later accused police and Citadel officials of attempting to squelch the investigation and of suspecting him of having shot himself in a plot to embarrass the school. Byrd returned to the college, but said he had lost his drive to join the military and received a business degree, also graduating in 1994.
Cormeny, a sophomore at the time of the shooting, could face misdemeanor charges for being a minor in possession of a handgun and a felony for bringing a handgun into a public school. The misdemeanor carries a two-year jail sentence, and the felony carries a five-year sentence. ``I view those charges as automatic,'' Charleston prosecutor David Schwacke said.
LENGTH: Medium: 54 linesby CNB