THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT

                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 8, 1994                    TAG: 9406080465 
SECTION: LOCAL                     PAGE: D3    EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: BY LYNN WALTZ, STAFF WRITER 
DATELINE: 940608                                 LENGTH: VIRGINIA BEACH 

MAN GETS 40 YEARS FOR ASSAULTING, KILLING GIRL

{LEAD} The grandparents wore laminated buttons with a picture of their slain 2-year-old granddaughter. The mother and father sobbed on the witness stand. The killer said a part of him died the day he sexually assaulted and murdered his girlfriend's daughter, Shacora Daniels.

In the end, the judge said David Horsley showed no remorse and sentenced him to the maximum allowed for second-degree murder and aggravated sexual battery - 40 years.

{REST} ``No one can figure out the senseless, brutal murder, one of the most horrible I've seen, based on the injuries in the autopsy,'' Judge A. Bonwill Shockley said. ``There's no rhyme nor reason. There's no explanation. There's no remorse. You're not willing to accept responsibility. This child's mother entrusted her care to you. This innocent child trusted you.''

Horsley's sentencing hearing was far more subdued than his guilty plea in April, when Shacora's father, Fabian Daniels, leapt from his seat, calling Horsley ``a freak'' and threatening to kill him.

Monday, Daniels, 25, cried quietly on the stand as he told Judge Shockley what the death of his daughter has meant: ``It hurts real bad, every day, every night. No matter where she was, she knew her daddy loved her. Sometimes I ask myself, `Why, how could you do that to my daughter?' I don't even want an answer now. It doesn't matter.''

Shacora's mother, Decora Lewis, 26, glared at Horsley from the stand. ``It should have been your daughter,'' she said sobbing. ``You took all I had.''

Horsley's family, including a brother who's a homicide investigator in Massachusetts, cried as well as they sat behind him in the gallery.

Horsley, 29, was arrested May 11, the day after he called 911 to report that his girlfriend's daughter had stopped breathing.

``My, uh, my daughter-in-law, she's takin' a bath . . . and she fell . . . like, she look like she going in shock,'' Horsley breathlessly told the 911 dispatcher.

Rescue workers told him how to perform CPR and rushed to the home in the 4100 block of MacArthur Road. But they found no water in the bathtub and the child's hair and body were dry. Instead, paramedics noted, she had suffered blows to the head, and there was vaginal and anal tearing.

Shacora died a few hours later.

Lewis recalled on the stand the moment she got the call to go to the hospital. ``I thought she fell off her bicycle. Then when I saw her laying out there, I didn't know what was wrong, I started freaking out. Then the detective told me they were pressing sexual abuse charges on David Horsley. I talked to him and he said he didn't do anything wrong. Then she died and they said she was beaten to death. At first I couldn't believe it.''

Defense attorney William P. Robinson Jr. urged the mother to overcome her guilt over leaving her daughter with her boyfriend.

``There should be no guilt in this mother's mind,'' Robinson said. ``There is nothing in this record that would remotely suggest he would ever hurt anybody.''

Robinson offered no explanation for what happened, asking the judge to temper justice with mercy - though Horsley showed no mercy for the child, he said.

Prosecutor Ramona Taylor asked for the maximum sentence.

``Unfortunately, this man has not seen fit to provide us with any explanation,'' Taylor said. ``She had just begun her life. No words or acts of a 2-year-old could justify this brutality. The joy she brought, her laughter. How could he take the life of a little girl?''

Horsley offered only a last-minute plea to Shockley.

``May 10, 1993, is the day that a part of me died too,'' Horsley said. ``Nobody knows the pain in my heart.''

The judge and family were unmoved.

``My daughter can't be brought back. Why should he be allowed out of prison?'' Lewis said. ``He stabbed all of us in the heart.''

{KEYWORDS} MURDER CHILD ABUSE SEXUAL ASSAULT RAPE JUVENILE TRIAL CONVICTION

by CNB