Va. Man Convicted In Fatal Shootings

A Prince William County jury convicted a 25-year-old Woodbridge man yesterday of capital murder in connection with a 2002 shooting rampage that stretched from Virginia to New York, and a prosecutor urged the panel to send the killer to death row.

The jury found that Joshua W. Andrews went to a Dumfries-area apartment Jan. 2, 2002, as part of a planned robbery. Prosecutors said he forced the three men inside to climb naked into the bathtub and started shooting.

Roommates and high school friends Romanno A. Head and Robert I. Morrison, both 22, were killed. Their friend, Rutherford Berry, was shot in the head but survived.

In seeking the death penalty for Andrews, Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney James A. Willett told jurors after the conviction was announced that Andrews has threatened court officials, attacked an inmate who testified against him and offered a guard cash to help him escape. Willett also told the jury that Andrews shot and wounded two people in New York after the apartment shootings.

"You know what he's done in his past. . . . You fully understand the horror that those three young men had to go through because of him," Willett said during his opening statement in the penalty phase of the trial. "He's more dangerous, more violent, more cold and calculated than he has ever been in his life."

Andrews's defense team described the defendant's troubled past as they asked the jury to spare his life. The lawyers said Andrews grew up with a father who was on death row, a drug-addicted mother and an abusive stepfather. They said that Virginia law allows only two sentences for capital murder, life without the possibility of parole or death.

"He'll die in jail, that's the bottom line," defense attorney Thomas B. Walsh said in court. "We're going to ask you for mercy. . . . We're going to ask you to have him spend the rest of his life in a 6-by-8 cell."

The jury will begin hearing from witnesses in the sentencing phase today.

During the trial in Prince William County Circuit Court, prosecutors said that Andrews and another man, Jamel S. Crawford of Woodbridge, went to Head and Morrison's apartment that January evening in 2002 to steal cash and marijuana.

Crawford, 28, a key prosecution witness who also is charged in the shootings, testified that he helped plan the robbery but that he never intended for anyone to get hurt. He is scheduled to go on trial next month.

Yesterday's verdict came after about 5 1/2 hours of deliberations over two days. The jury also found Andrews guilty of several other offenses, including robbery, abduction and weapons charges, in connection with the apartment shootings.

The jury acquitted Andrews of first-degree murder in the unrelated death of a 24-year-old Woodbridge man who had been slain a few weeks before the apartment shootings. Clayton Breeding was shot Dec. 12, 2001, in the parking lot of Rippon Middle School in Woodbridge.

Breeding's mother, Karol Santmyer, said she is distraught by the acquittal but takes some comfort in knowing that Andrews will never be free. "He's evil, that's what his name is," she said.

Andrews's mother, Imani Taymullah, who wept outside the courtroom after the verdict was read, said she cannot imagine that her son committed the crimes.

"I'm sorry for the pain that the families are going through. I've always prayed for them," she said. "I hope they can find it in their hearts to forgive."

Walsh said in court that Taymullah took drugs when her son was a child and that she was married to a man who beat both of them. Andrews was a baby when his father was sentenced to death; he was later fatally stabbed by another inmate.

When Andrews was 8, a neighborhood boy pushed him into a shed and set it on fire. Andrews was burned on his face and hands, and kids called him "crispy critter" and "mummy."

In spring 2000, Colorado police charged Andrews with the shooting deaths of his brother and his brother's girlfriend. He was acquitted.

Authorities said that after the Virginia apartment shootings, Andrews and Crawford went to New York, where they robbed and shot a convenience store clerk in Queens. After that shooting, they fled to the Bronx, where they shot another man. Andrews and Crawford were convicted of attempted murder in New York.