VIRGINIA BRIEFING

ALEXANDRIA

Civil Lawsuits Seek Damages From Teen Who Slashed Officers

An Alexandria police officer and two former city officers who were slashed two years ago by a 17-year-old honor student sued him yesterday for damages.

The three victims filed civil suits in Alexandria Circuit Court seeking compensatory and punitive damages of $1.35 million each. Keegan Zacharie, who was near the top of his T.C. Williams High School class at the time of the September 2005 attack, is serving a five-year prison term for wounding Detective Venus Roman and Officers Mark Petersen and Sean Casey.

Roman and Petersen are no longer with the city force.

Also named as a defendant in the suits is Tiffany Gibbs, who was described as Zacharie's girlfriend and who was never charged with a crime. At Zacharie's trial, she testified that she knew he planned to rob a gun store. That plan played a role in Zacharie's actions the day of the attack, prosecutors said.

The three officers have recovered from their physical injuries but are still suffering the psychological effects of having a "young boy take a knife and open them up like a tin can," said Michael Kernback, the plaintiffs' attorney.

-- Daniela Deane

U.S. DISTRICT COURT

Bankruptcy Lawyer Sentenced For Conspiracy to Commit Fraud

A bankruptcy lawyer who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud was sentenced yesterday in federal court in Alexandria to a year and a day in federal prison.

U.S. District Court Judge Gerald Bruce Lee also ordered Leslie W. Lickstein, 54, of Fairfax to pay $1.1 million in restitution to Lehman Brothers Bank. Federal prosecutors said Lickstein served as a settlement attorney in the sale of a property in Great Falls in July 2002 and admitted that he filed a false statement with the bank, which then made a multimillion-dollar mortgage loan to a buyer who was not creditworthy. When the buyer defaulted, the bank sold the property at a loss of $1.1 million, prosecutors said.