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HARRISONBURG - One of the suspects charged in connection with the Nov. 9 shooting that mortally wounded a Staunton man was out on bond on firearm and drug charges at the time of the shooting.

Rockingham County prosecutors say Ricky Parrish, 21, of Ruckersville, has pending charges in New York City for possession of a firearm and marijuana.

Combined with the current charges, Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Louis Nagy argued Tuesday that Parrish should remain behind bars until his trial.

"Given the circumstances of this case ... [the previous charges] cannot be ignored," Nagy told the judge.

Parrish has been charged with felony gang participation and misdemeanor assault and battery by mob in the fatal shooting of Reginald "Shay" Nicholson.

Nicholson, 19, was shot in the head during the early morning hours of Nov. 9 after leaving a party at the Hunters Ridge apartment complex off Port Republic Road. He died Friday at the University of Virginia Medical Center, where he had been in critical condition since the shooting.

Harrisonburg police considered Parrish a fugitive from justice until he turned himself in to police on Nov. 19.

The Hearing

Parrish's defense attorney, Bruce Albertson, argued that his client should receive bond because he has a stable place to stay with his mother, has no violent convictions and is able to get a job.

Albertson also said the only evidence presented so far shows Parrish in a picture with other people who were throwing gang signs. His client was not one of those making the signs, Albertson added.

However, Nagy said Parrish was part of the group responsible for the shooting.

"They arrived together ... they left together," said Nagy, who added that police found several weapons located in Parrish's Ruckersville home during a search following the shooting.

After hearing from both sides, General District Court Judge Kent Bowers ordered Parrish held without bond.

Other Suspects

Parrish is one of five people charged in connection with the killing of Nicholson, a former star tailback at Robert E. Lee High School in Staunton.

Zackery Turner, 18, the suspected triggerman in the case, is charged with first-degree murder, use or display of a firearm in the commission of a felony, reckless handling of a firearm and discharging a firearm in or around a school.

Turner, of Charlottesville, is being held in the Rockingham County Jail and has not yet had a bond hearing.

Gregory Baker, 20, and Ricky Parrish's brother, Demonds Parrish, 19, are charged with felony gang participation and assault and battery by mob. Jahmaine Faqiri, 18, is charged with felony brandishing a firearm, gang participation and assault and battery by mob.

All three men, who are from Ruckersville, have been denied bond.

Contact Pete DeLea at 574-6278 or pdelea@dnronline.com

BY ADAM H. BEASLEY
abeasley@MiamiHerald.com

Two gang-bangers from Virginia, made infamous for a killing featured by America's Most Wanted, have been dealing drugs out of a Dania Beach motel, according to authorities.

That is, they had been until Tuesday night, when Broward sheriff's deputies knocked on the door of the men on the lam since July.

Joshua Daly, 20, and Tavon Pauley, 21, are now in county lock-up, held there until Virginia authorities come pick them up on outstanding second-degree murder warrants.

Daly and Pauley, both of Norfolk, Va., are accused of shooting and killing Dawan Floyd, 23, in the middle of the street on July 25 over some sort of gang-related skirmish, according to America's Most Wanted's website.

On Daly's right arm is the tattooed initials ''GD'' -- for Gangster Disciples. Pauley is a member of the Bloods, AMW reports.

The pair disappeared shortly after the killing, only to resurface hundreds of miles south.

Four months to the day after Floyd's death, BSO detectives received a tip that two men were selling drugs out of the Roadway Inn, 2440 State Road 84.

Little did they know the men inside the room were wanted for far worse.

Norfolk police have been alerted to the arrest, BSO said, and will travel to Broward to interview the men.

Smyth County News: News >
Wed Nov 26, 2008 - 07:16 PM

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

There’s no sign of the past nightlife manifestations in the restaurant of the former Best Western motel in Marion.
On one wall hangs a still-life of roses, grapes, apples and three bottles of wine.
On the mirrored wall behind the bar hangs a print of “The Last Supper,” Leonardo DaVinci’s’ interpretation of the scriptural account of Jesus Christ’s final sharing of bread and wine with his followers.
These images are the closest one will come to alcoholic beverages in the place, and the latter speaks to the reason why.
Steve Hayes is a month into his second stint running an eating establishment in the motel, recently bought by Magnuson Hotels and awaiting a name change. Earlier this decade, he ran the Iron Head Saloon, a very different gathering place, run apparently by a very different man.
Hayes admitted the saloon was a front for drug dealing. “I would get drugs brought to me and take them to Philadelphia,” Hayes said. “It was a million-dollar-a-year business.”
Philadelphia was home for Hayes. He grew up to become a musician there, playing in bands and performing in the nightclubs that would be his portal into the city’s drug world.
“One day somebody stuck a needle in my arm and that was the end of me,” said Hayes. “From that day on, it was nothing but drugs.”
In a voice made raspy by rough living, Hayes freely tells his whole sordid story, clearly leaving out the darkest details, but revealing still a vivid portrait of a man he said “should have been dead many, many times. The only reason I’m alive is my mother’s prayers.”
By the 1980s, Hayes said, he was involved with the Philadelphia mafia, running drugs and working for the mob as a money collector. He said he was known as a collector who came through.
“I did what it took,” he said, “and I always came back with the money. I never killed anybody. Thank God I never killed anybody.”
He tried to, he admitted, and paid the price.
“I got set up and busted for drugs,” he said. “I was out of prison for three days and found the person who set me up. I went back for attempted homicide.”
After serving that sentence, Hayes got his own nightclub, “a drug place, and worked my way up the ladder. I had two cars bombed, and my house was full of bullet holes. I was in shootouts with the mob guys. My wife and son lived there. It was a dark, dark world.”
With an ironic chuckle suggesting the question was preposterous, Hayes said he was no longer married.
“I got away from that and joined an outlaw motorcycle gang,” becoming its vice president, he said.
In 2001, Hayes came to Marion and opened the Iron Head Saloon.
“To make a long story short, some people did me wrong down here,” Hayes said. “In 2004, me and two other guys came down here to kill those people.”
Somehow, he said, the FBI knew he was coming and lay in wait in a small town along Hayes’ path to Marion. But driving a rented a car, he got away. “I took the car back to Philadelphia and came back to do it myself.”
Hayes’ mother lives in Konnarock, and he stayed in her house. “I had my guns and everything,” he said.
There is where the change in Hayes began. “So she gets up in the middle of the night and says, ‘I know why God brought you here,’” he said.
“There’s a little church over there, a log church,” Hayes said, referring to Laurel Valley Community Church. “My grandfather and great-grandfather helped build that church. It was a Wednesday night in August. There was a meeting at that church, and Mom begged me to go. Out of respect for Mom, I went.”
Steve Hayes, a man who said he’d had pistols shoved into his mouth by shaking hands that for some reason never pulled the triggers, who pistol-whipped a drug debtor and took his possessions in lieu of cash, whose lucrative drug lifestyle led him to once say “I have more money than God,” found himself with his mother in a rugged mountain church.
“A man from South Africa spoke that night,” Hayes said. “He put his hands on me and told me things about my life that only God would know. I had an encounter with God that night.”
Hayes said that for two years, “I never turned on the TV. All I did was read the Bible.”
Still, the effects of his godless past would continue to haunt him. He had a heart attack, and said the doctors in Abingdon could not start an IV in his collapsed veins. “They finally got it in my neck.”
He said he prayed for God to “show me what you want me to do. Every time I leave here, it doesn’t work out.”
Hayes sat at a table in his motel restaurant that was silent except for his strong, eloquent voice, a restaurant that once had a very different purpose and clientele.
“God,” he said, “woke me up at 3 one morning with this place plain as day in my face. He told me to open a Christian dinner club. I was going to call it that, but God said, ‘No, call it this.’” Hayes pointed to the name Resolutions on a flyer lying on the table.
Resolutions is open with “no more alcohol, no more smoking,” Hayes said, from 4 to 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturday, and offers a munch buffet from noon to 4 on Sundays. It features live music – gospel, contemporary and bluegrass bands perform – and “speakers on the sacred and secular,” the flyer said.
As for the bar, it serves coffee.
Gone are the pool tables to make room for tables at which to seat diners, Hayes said. “The good Lord’s going to fill this place up,” and they’ll be fed by New York chef who Hayes said had moved to Galax.
While Hayes said everything he owned was bought with illegal money and was seized, he came through it still owning recording studio equipment he hopes to set up to record local gospel groups in cooperation with a Christian music producer in Nashville.
Hayes said he has found that among his waitresses and the customers they serve, some of whom have been homeless, many are in need the kind of fulfillment he has found. He believes that can only come from a personal relationship with God, and that is more important than the religious denomination one may choose.
He also said he tells children to avoid drugs and the path he took. He said drug users start out by looking for enjoyment: I’ll try this and it will be fun, right? “I tell every kid, what have I missed out on? I missed out on my family, Thanksgiving, Christmas. I missed out on life.”
And while he remains friends with people from his dark past in Philadelphia, Hayes said, “I’m not ready to start preaching to those guys yet.”
Hayes said that urban underworld is on the move. “The world I came out of, most people might see in the movies,” Hayes said, “but it’s coming south, the gangs, the drugs.”
His concern is that this region is fertile for growing the kinds of lawlessness he left in Philadelphia, whose name translates ironically as “city of brotherly love.”
“When I had this place, the Iron Head Saloon, and it was for the devil, it was packed,” he said. “In my personal opinion, there’s a cloud over Marion. He also sounded a couple of warnings for the larger community. “Abingdon is full of drugs. Marion is full of drugs.”
Hayes seems sincere in his transformation, his new convictions under the law of God instead of criminal codes. His eyes misted and glistened as he talked of finding a better way.
“I haven’t stopped weeping yet,” he said. “I should be in hell. Don’t ever underestimate the power of a mother’s prayers.

Four of the men charged in connection to the shooting death of Reginald "Shay" Nicholson made bond appeals in court Monday.

Jahmaine Faqiri will remain in jail after a Rockingham County judge denied his bond. His Attorney argued Faqiri did not have a violent criminal past.

During that hearing, a Harrisonburg Police officer took the stand to talk about the events leading up to the shooting at Hunter's Ridge on November 9. He says a group walked into one of the apartments that night and passed a "B" sign, which stands for the "Bloods" gang. Others allegedly passed a "C," which stands for the "Crypts." It was sometime after that police say a fight broke out which involved Faqiri.

Gregory Baker, who was also allegedly involved in that fight, withdrew his bond appeal in court. Attorneys for Demonds Parrish decided to continue a bond appeal to a later date.

Zackery Turner, who is charged with first degree murder for the death of Nicholson, was denied bond in Harrisonburg's General District court Monday.

HARRISONBURG — A Staunton man shot Nov. 9 near the James Madison University campus in what police have described as a gang-related shooting died Thursday night, according to a Facebook Web page established by family friend Cindy Wood.


Reginald “Shay” Nicholson, 19, was at a party with friends when a confrontation resulted in gunshots being fired. Nicholson, a former Robert E. Lee High School football standout and 2007 graduate, was shot in the head. The incident took place about 3 a.m. in the 1300 block of Bradley Drive at the Hunter Ridge Apartments.

Nicholson had been listed in critical condition for 11 days at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville.

Throughout the shooting investigation the Harrisonburg Police Department has refused to identify Nicholson as the victim, citing safety concerns. This afternoon, the police department would not acknowledge that Nicholson had died, and said “the victim” in the shooting was still listed in critical condition at U.Va. Medical Center as of 1 p.m.

Repeated attempts to reach Harrisonburg prosecutor Marsha Garst for comment were unsuccessful.

During his senior season at Lee, Nicholson rushed for 1,532 yards with an average of 8.1 yards per carry, scored 25 touchdowns, was named to the all-Region II team and was the News Leader all-city/county offensive player of the year. Nicholson was on the Roanoke Times Top 100 Senior Recruits list, listed at No. 71.

Five suspects have been arrested in connection with the shooting. The suspected shooter, Zackery Turner, 18, of Charlottesville was initially charged with aggravated malicious wounding, use of a firearm in commission of a felony, reckless handling of a firearm and discharge of a firearm in or around a school.

Four Ruckersville men, Ricky Parrish, 21; Gregory Baker, 20; Demonds Parrish, 19, and Jahmaine Faqiri, 18, face charges of assault and battery by a mob and gang participation. Faqiri also is charged with brandishing a firearm.

At a fundraiser last weekend for the Nicholson family, Matt Ware, 19, who said he was with Nicholson the night he was shot, said two gunshots were fired into the air by one of the assailants. Ware said the gun ended up on the ground and was picked up by another person, who fired one indiscriminate shot before turning the gun on Nicholson.

RICHMOND - Paradise C. is a gang member in Virginia, and he has a soft spot for children.

See, he can recruit a 10-year-old to do his bidding, and if the kid gets arrested, so what? He spends a couple of years in the juvenile justice system and returns to the street, where he is rewarded with money and rank. The child becomes a willing soldier. And so grows the gang.

As Paradise C. looks into the camera, he is neither angry nor threatening. He sounds more like an up-and-coming entrepreneur touting the advantages of a successful business model.

This scene is taken from a new video, "The Wrong Family: Virginia Fights Back Against Gangs." Replete with bloody death scenes, blurred faces of criminals and graphic language, it offers an unblinking look at a problem that has spread from urban areas like Hampton Roads into the hinterlands.

Attorney General Bob McDonnell released it Tuesday and will make 1,000 copies available to law enforcement agencies. He seeks an audience in churches, PTA meetings, community groups and wherever anyone is in denial about gangs in their community.

"We have gangs in the commonwealth," he said. "We need to confront the problem head on."

Since 2004, the legislature has approved more than two dozen measures aimed at curbing gang violence. New laws target the recruiting of members, hazing and graffiti. Increased penalties for mid-level drug dealers are on the books, and more crimes were added to the list that can be prosecuted under gang-participation laws.

Generally, these measures have been an easy sell in a legislature that prides itself on a get-tough attitude toward crime.

But it has not stopped gangs from spreading in scope and sophistication. Rather than attract attention by committing high-profile crimes, gangs have diversified into drug-dealing, prostitution and other money-making schemes, less like thugs and more like the Mafia, law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

The 25-minute video attacks the problem from another angle — prevention. It is designed to keep children from joining gangs in the first place and to spur parents, educators and religious leaders to spot early warning signs.

The price tag is relatively paltry by government standards — a ,000 budget funded by federal grants and money seized from criminals. A larger and different fiscal challenge awaits McDonnell in 2009, when the former Virginia Beach prosecutor will end his term as attorney general and lead the Republican Party as its candidate for governor.

Virginia, like many states, faces a budget crisis — a shortfall of at least .5 billion. When the legislature convenes in January, every state program is likely to be scrutinized for potential savings.

McDonnell plans to take a hard line when it comes to his budget.

"I've asked during this budget round, whatever else we do, there should be no cuts in law enforcement or public safety funding," he said. "I think that's the first and foremost job of government."

Meanwhile, law enforcement officials hope to steer more children away from the streets and into programs such as summer camps and midnight basketball leagues. Several such programs are featured in the video, which hammers home a simple point: Gangs do not thrive when children have other things to do.

Christopher Robinson knows this firsthand. Now a resident of Henrico County, he was 18 and living in Mississippi when he was gunned down in an act of gang violence. The bullet put him a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

Now 33, he is attending community college and majoring in computer science, hoping to turn his life around. He is featured in the video and appeared at McDonnell's press conference, where he spoke in a halting voice about how gangs nearly ended his life. He joined a gang because he had idle time and craved acceptance.

"Gangs don't care about kids. They don't care about no one."

STAUNTON — A Waynesboro gang member who shot a Staunton man in March 2007 on Baylor Street was sentenced to four years behind bars Tuesday at a hearing in Staunton Circuit Court.

Logan A. Atkins, 20, pleaded guilty in March to charges of unlawful wounding, gang participation and reckless handling of a firearm.

Staunton assistant prosecutor Jeff Gaines said Atkins, armed with a .380 handgun, and a second man, Lee Antonio Turner, confronted a group of people on Baylor Street the night of March 31, 2007. Words were exchanged when Turner urged Atkins to "pull that thing and spray them," said Gaines.

Atkins shot 19-year-old Lamar Waddy of Staunton, who was wounded in the buttocks.

Prior to the shooting, Atkins had been on the run from authorities, fleeing his King Avenue home in January 2007 after a probation officer smelled marijuana and saw bullets in his bedroom. Police found packaged marijuana, cash and two semi-automatic rifles. Waynesboro police tracked Atkins down in April of that year and arrested him within days of the Staunton shooting. In August 2007, Atkins was sentenced in Waynesboro Circuit Court to four years in prison on two charges of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

In January, Circuit Judge Humes J. Franklin Jr. rejected an original plea deal between Atkins and the Staunton prosecutor's office for an additional four-year prison term, and recused himself from the case. With a new judge in place, on Tuesday Gaines again asked for the four-year sentence.

"During those years, the public can rest a little easier" as Atkins matures, Gaines said.

Circuit Judge Thomas H. Wood accepted the agreement, sentencing Atkins to three years in prison on the unlawful wounding and gang charges, and 12 months in jail for the reckless handling of a firearm.

Tuesday's sentences will be tacked on to Atkin's Waynesboro charges, giving him a total of eight years to serve. Wood also placed him on 10 years probation.

Criminal charges against Turner were dropped.

TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

The Virginia Attorney General's Office yesterday deployed a new weapon in the ongoing war against gangs in the commonwealth: a video.

The 25-minute documentary, "The Wrong Family: Virginia Fights Back Against Gangs," is not the gang version of the famous prison documentary "Scared Straight," as much as it is straight talk -- a teaching tool for law enforcement and anti-gang community organizations to preach gang education and prevention among at-risk youth in the commonwealth.

"We've got tough laws, we've got well-trained law enforcement," said Attorney General Bob McDonnell, flanked by law-enforcement officers and prosecutors from the Richmond region and beyond yesterday during a screening of the video at the state Capitol in Richmond.

"Now we need the best education and prevention strategies we can put together in Virginia."

The video was produced for the attorney general's office by Richmond-based Metro Productions at a cost of ,000.

It features parents whose children have been affected by gang involvement, and law-enforcement officers who confront gang activity in the urban and rural regions of the state. It stops in the emergency room of VCU Medical Center, where doctors with blood literally on their hands try to stitch together lives torn apart by gang-related violence.

And, most powerfully, the documentary features interviews with Virginia gang members speaking bluntly about their involvement and its consequences.

"Love your kids," warns gang member Paradise C. "It's not hard. It's a simple concept."

Also included in the video is former gang member Christopher Robinson, 33, who was paralyzed in a gang-related incident in Mississippi in the 1990s.

"I was looking for a family, somewhere I could fit in," said Robinson, who uses a wheelchair and attended yesterday's news conference. He is working with the attorney general's office to spread the anti-gang message across the state.

"It wasn't a family for me at all. We as a community have got to save our kids. We can't let them choose the wrong family."

For more information on the video and gang prevention efforts, visit www.oag.state.va.us/KEY_ISSUES/GANGS/.
Contact Jim Nolan at (804) 649-6061 or jnolan@timesdispatch.com.

HAMPTON, Va. - They chose the wrong family to mess with. Those are strong words from Attorney General Bob McDonnell. He's talking about gangs in the Commonwealth and he has a powerful plan to show kids why gang life is a deadly choice.

On Tuesday, he released a video that takes a hard look at the life of gang members, through the eyes of gang members. It's a growing trend in the United States and Hampton Roads.

"It's everywhere, unfortunately and I think a lot of times people aren't as aware as they need to be," says Laverne Johnson of Hampton.

Creating gang awareness is why Attorney General Bob McDonnell wants police officers in Virginia to share this video with everyone in their cities. It's an idea the Hampton Police Division backs 100 percent.

"We're extremely aggressive in our approach to gangs and the charges that come out of it," says Cpl. Allison Good.

Good says Hampton police take full advantage of the gang participation charge.

"If we're able to prove that the illegal activity that went on was a result or a part of gang activity, we do enforce the gang participation charge," says Good.

Good tells WAVY.com approximately 30 arrests this year in Hampton resulted in that felony charge. That includes a case as recently as August where police arrested two teenagers, accused of robbing and shooting a 75 year-old man in his Custer Court home.

Violent crimes like murders and shootings are all related to gangs and all reasons to get the video out now.

"It's getting worse and I think it's getting more violent and worse in this area," says Johnson.

The video was released Tuesday, no word yet on when police departments will begin using it.

By Annie McCallum

Published: November 19, 2008

The Amherst County School Board got a lesson on crime during a recent board meeting. Division officials met with sheriff’s office representatives to discuss crime in the division.

Some board members were surprised to hear the presence of gangs is not something readily discussed in the community.

Amherst sheriff’s Sgt. Denny Black praised the strong relationship between the school system and his office, saying officials have briefed administrators and on gangs, but parents don’t seem interested.

“A lot of times we’re not interested until it has an impact on us and then its too late,” Black said.

Black said gangs and gang-related crime are issues in Amherst County, as hard as that may be for some people to believe.

“We’re seeing a big increase as far as the activity,” he said. “It’s growing. It’s intensifying. If we don’t get a grip on it, it will be a bigger problem down the road.”

Amherst Investigator Gerald Higginbotham presented a PowerPoint to division officials documenting gang activity. Before starting, he told board members all the photos were from Amherst, not “big cities.” In fact, he said, most pictures are from the schools in the county.

“Eight years ago if you asked me if there was a gang problem, I’d probably laugh at you,” Higginbotham said, adding now that’s simply not the case.

As he showed slide after slide of gang tags, tattooed students, and various hand signals, he explained most of his gang information comes from the county’s schools. The average age of a gang member is between 12 and 14 years old, he said.

“The SROs (school resource officers) are my support, without them I don’t have any information,” he said.

After the presentation, which also included a visit from Tina (one of the county’s drug dogs), Superintendent Brian Ratliff thanked sheriff’s officials.

Ratliff also suggested the board think of times when they might have “captive audience” of parents where they could get across gang information and inform people who might not realize there’s a problem.

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