THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 8, 1997 TAG: 9701080329
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SUSIE STOUGHTON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: 67 lines
One of the two teen-agers charged in the knife slaying of a bookstore clerk the week before Christmas will undergo psychological evaluation before the teens' preliminary hearings on first-degree murder and related charges.
June D. Sykes' court-appointed guardian, Suffolk attorney Michael D. Eberhardt, said Tuesday in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court that he had information from the teen's mother that had given him ``some cause for concern.'' He asked for time for the evaluation.
Judge Alfreda Talton Harris continued the hearings to Feb. 25, for Sykes and co-defendant George M. Fenner Jr., both 15.
Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Jo Anne Spencer, who will prosecute the teens if the charges are certified, said after the hearing that an evaluation was requested only for Sykes, who is accused of cutting Lilley's throat.
The teen-agers were arrested Dec. 19, the day after Margaret M. ``Peggy'' Lilley died at The Bookhaven in the Suffolk Plaza Shopping Center on North Main Street. She was found on the floor at the rear of the store by a man who came in just after the attack.
Sykes' attorney, Johnnie E. Mizelle, told the judge that the teen's mother was upset over media coverage since the slaying.
``I have no control over that,'' Talton Harris said.
Under the Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 1996, defendants 14 years old or older who are charged with violent felonies are routinely tried as adults.
Spencer said she plans to prosecute the defendants together if probable cause is found.
Sykes and Fenner face possible life sentences on charges of first-degree murder, and breaking and entering with intent to commit burglary while armed with a deadly weapon. They are also charged with cut, stab or wound, which carries a maximum sentence of five years.
The defendants waited in a holding cell Tuesday behind the Main Street courthouse while their attorneys and their mothers appeared before the judge. The victim's family did not attend.
The teens were later returned to Tidewater Detention Home in Chesapeake, where they have been held since their arrests.
They are the first juveniles in Suffolk to be charged with murder under the new statute.
Sykes, an eighth-grader at John Yeates Middle School, and Fenner, a ninth-grader at Nansemond River High School, were identified after police viewed tapes recorded that afternoon by store cameras. Both teen-agers later admitted to police that they had participated in Lilley's death, according to court records.
Spencer - and Fenner's attorneys, Timothy E. Miller and John C. Lauterbach Jr. - presented a joint motion Tuesday, asking for a continuance for the preliminary hearing for Fenner. They needed more time, they said, because they had not received the police case report or the autopsy report from the state medical examiner.
Lilley was working alone at the bookstore when two suspects came into the store, where she had worked for at least 10 years. They had been in the shop earlier that day and the day before, police said. According to a search warrant on file in Circuit Court, Sykes told police he had stolen magazines from the store a couple of days earlier.
A metal blade of a utility-type knife, believed to be the murder weapon, was recovered by police after the slaying. < ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by JOHN H. SHEALLY II/The Virginian-Pilot
June D. Sykes, center, and George M. Fenner Jr., right, both 15, are
returned to jail Tuesday by a Suffolk sheriff's deputy. The teens'
hearings were continued to Feb. 15.
KEYWORDS: MURDER JUVENILE TEENAGER STABBING