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Man convicted in mall shooting

By John Stevenson : The Herald-Sun, Jan 25, 2007 : 11:27 pm ET

DURHAM -- Lamar Bass was found guilty of first-degree murder Thursday and sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing another teen outside Northgate Mall, prompting the prosecutor to call on clergy, city officials and others to take the glamour out of gang activity and drug dealing.

Jurors began deliberating in Durham County Superior Court Wednesday afternoon and continued into Thursday afternoon before convicting Bass, who was 17 at the time, of fatally shooting 16-year-old Lazarren Tyqwan McLean outside the former Hecht's store at Northgate Mall on Dec. 26, 2005.

Bass was acquitted on a charge of shooting and wounding another man during the same incident.

That victim, Guinzell Nahdee Williamson, still has a bullet lodged in his neck but was unable to identify the gunman. Nor did anyone else testify that he saw Bass shoot Williamson.

But in the killing of McLean -- unlike the assault on Williamson -- at least one witness pointed to Bass as the shooter.

Evidence indicated that Bass may have threatened to "snatch" McLean's sister, and McLean was standing up for her just before bullets began flying.

Prosecutor Tracey Cline had told jurors in a closing argument Wednesday that Bass fired at least five shots, and that the slaying of McLean was an act of cold-blooded, premeditated murder -- an assertion with which the jury agreed in its verdict.

"I don't think there's any winner in this situation," Cline said after the case ended Thursday.

"We have two families in mourning," she added. "One youth is dead and another is going to prison for the rest of his life."

Characterizing the homicide as an act of senseless violence, Cline called for affirmative action to help prevent such incidents in the future.

"This spotlights the fact that we in Durham need to get our youths back on track," she said. "We need to catch our kids while they are in preschool and elementary school and give them appropriate role models. We need to de-glamorize gangs and drug dealers. I think we can do that through education."

Defense lawyer Woody Vann agreed with that assessment.

"This may not have been clearly a gang-related action, but it definitely had gang overtures," Vann said of the Northgate shooting.

"That tends to pervade a lot of what happens in Durham," said Vann. "Sad, but true."

Vann added that Thursday's mixed verdict confused him.

"All the evidence indicated there was but one shooter," he said. "Yet, they found my client guilty of shooting one victim and not the other. That made the verdict inconsistent in my mind."

According to Vann, Bass accepted his life sentence with outward calm, declining an opportunity to address the judge and the murder victim's relatives.

http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-812982.cfm

* One more off the streets for awhile. Woody is keeping busy. Good work Tracey and the jury.

http://www.newsobserver.com/100/story/536409.html

Published: Jan 26, 2007 12:30 AM
Modified: Jan 26, 2007 03:25 AM

Campus brawl brings FBI
5 Guilford football players charged

Kristin Collins, Staff Writer

Two more Guilford College football players were charged Thursday with beating a group of Palestinian students during a drunken weekend brawl, and the FBI is investigating whether a hate crime occurred on the small Quaker campus.
Five members of the Greensboro school's football team now face charges of assault and racial intimidation.

Three Palestinian students, one of whom attends N.C. State University, told authorities that, early Saturday morning, the players pummeled them with fists, feet and brass knuckles while calling them "terrorists" and shouting racial slurs.

The incident is prompting concern among Muslims all over North Carolina and drawing media attention from around the country. However, details of the fight are still unclear.

Aaron Fetrow, Guilford College's dean for campus life, said his staff has interviewed a dozen witnesses and several participants in the fight, which occurred outside a dormitory. He said school officials have gotten contradictory accounts, and still don't know what started the fight.

He said most witnesses agree on only two basic facts -- that there was a large fight and that racial slurs were shouted.

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Baines case ends in mistrial

By John Stevenson : The Herald-Sun, Jan 30, 2007 : 10:11 pm ET

DURHAM -- Jurors were unable to decide Tuesday whether Ricky Eugene Baines attempted to kill six teens outside MetroSport Athletic Club in 2005, but Baines will be tried again on those charges and also faces an unrelated charge of first-degree murder.

Superior Court Judge Osmond Smith declared a mistrial in the MetroSport case at midday Tuesday after jurors indicated they were hopelessly deadlocked at 7-5 and saw no chance of reaching unanimity.

It isn't known which way the jury was leaning.

A new trial date hasn't been set.

Baines, 22, is accused of shooting and wounding six young people at a private MetroSport swim party -- on Douglas Street -- in August 2005.

Evidence indicated that he and four others drove to the party, got into an altercation with rival gang members and opened fire after someone threw a rock through the window of the sport utility vehicle in which Baines and his companions were riding.

Among the most serious wounds, one victim was shot in the back, another through the arm and a third through the leg. A fourth still has a bullet in his neck because physicians reportedly fear the possible complications of surgical removal.

Jurors began deliberating the case on Monday and continued until just before noon on Tuesday, putting in about six hours of discussion before the mistrial was announced. At one point, they said an "intent-to-kill" clause in the charges against Baines was causing them difficulty.

The charges are officially titled assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, inflicting serious injury -- often shortened to attempted murder.

Defense lawyer Christopher Shella had argued that Baines was untruthfully implicated by codefendants out to exchange their testimony for generous plea bargains.

In a separate case, Baines is accused of first-degree murder in the January 2005 fatal shooting of George R. "Bull" Perry, whose body was found near a baseball field between Liberty and Holloway streets.

As with the MetroSport incident, police have said they believed the Perry homicide was gang-related.

Perry is being held without bond on the murder charge. However, his $2 million bond in the MetroSport cases was reduced Tuesday to $500,000.

http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-814570.cfm