ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 11, 1997 TAG: 9702110063
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
THE PAROLED ROANOKE MAN once ambushed a rival in a car during a feud sparked by a drug-related argument, records show.
Roland Muhammad, who was arrested last summer in a Roanoke alley with an assault rifle five months after making parole in the shooting of two men, has been sentenced to 32 years in prison.
Muhammad, 22, was sentenced Friday to six years in prison for possessing an SKS assault rifle and a handgun in June. As a felon, Muhammad was prohibited from having a gun.
Roanoke Circuit Judge Clifford Weckstein also imposed a 26-year sentence that he had suspended in 1992 after convicting Muhammad of ambushing a car in Northwest Roanoke in 1991 and shooting two of its occupants.
Muhammad, who was 17 at the time, joined his older brother in shooting up a car on 11th Street Northwest - targeting a man in the car who had shot Muhammad in the leg during an earlier drug-related argument, according to testimony at the time.
In 1992, Muhammad received an eight-year sentence - with 26 years suspended - for wounding the two men in the shooting. He was released on parole in January 1996, according to Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Ann Gardner.
On the night of June 19, 1996, police noticed Muhammad in an alley as they patrolled the 1700 block of Melrose Avenue Northwest after receiving reports of shots having been fired in the area.
Muhammad was carrying a semiautomatic rifle wrapped in a white T-shirt and 13 rounds of ammunition in a 30-round magazine, Gardner said. He also had a loaded two-shot handgun in his pants pocket.
In asking Weckstein to revoke the entire 26 years of Muhammad's suspended sentence, Gardner called him "a tragedy waiting to happen."
Police said the man who Muhammad had targeted in the 1991 revenge shooting was in a nearby bar when Muhammad was arrested. But Muhammad testified that he was not aware of that.
"Who knows what he was going to do with those guns," Gardner said. "We can only guess."
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