It’s not every day that a witness testifies without using their full name. But in the case of Travis William Herndon, an unemployed 25-year-old accused of shooting an 18-year-old woman driving in Charlottesville’s Belmont neighborhood this past June, fear abounds.
“There are some significant safety concerns from witnesses,” Deputy Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina-Alice Antony said.
Antony was offering the state’s evidence at Herndon’s preliminary hearing last Thursday in Charlottesville General District Court and explaining some of the secrecy measures.
“The warrants,” she said, “use just the initials.”
Indeed, even the name of the victim in the June 20 shooting outside the Carlton Views Apartments is listed in court documents only as H.H.
H.H. was driving an Acura about six minutes after midnight with two men in the vehicle when she was struck “just under her left ear” by gunfire, according to Charlottesville police detective Jemell Houchens.
“Bullet fragments were later found in her brain,” Houchens testified.
As the shackled and surgical-masked Herndon listened from the defense table, Houchens said that police found “four distinct strikes” to the vehicle and seven 9mm bullet casings on Carlton Avenue after the shooting. What police did not find, Houchens conceded during the cross-examination, was a firearm.
The other person to testify was J.S., who took the stand dressed in a gray polo shirt with short dreadlocks. He spoke of hoping to go to a pool that night but ended up visiting someone he said he’d met about 10 times, Herndon, to buy some marijuana.
“He gave it to me and hit me, and I walked away,” J.S. testified matter-of-factly.
By this point in the proceedings, a surveillance video, one of two such videos played in court Thursday, shows J.S. getting struck with a pistol.
“He hit you with a gun?” asked Antony.
“Yes,” J.S. replied.
“And were you injured?”
“A cut on my forehead,” J.S. replied.
Unknown to him at the time was why Herndon was acting angrily, he said. But J.S. could tell something was amiss when Herndon began heading toward the Acura into which he and his brother had climbed.
“He ran at the car,” J.S. testified. “And then he shot at the car.”
As the officer had already testified, the gunfire injured the driver and led her to crash the car into a nearby residence.
That, said J.S., is when he and his brother, T.S., bailed out of the vehicle. It was only when Herndon subsequently telephoned after the shooting that J.S. learned the reason for Herndon’s ire.
“A problem with the cash app,” he told the court.
It seemed that the payment for the marijuana did not get processed.
Near the end of the hearing, during the cross-examination of J.S., Herndon’s attorney, Thomas Wilson, prefaced his last question with what he said was a statement made by the witness.
“’We killed her, we killed her, she’s dead,’” said Wilson. “Do you you remember making that statement?”
“No,” J.S. replied calmly.
With that, the commonwealth rested, and Judge Andrew Sneathern certified three charges to the grand jury in Charlottesville Circuit Court. In addition to attempted malicious wounding, for the pistol-whipping, Herndon faces a charge of shooting at a vehicle and aggravated malicious wounding, the most serious charge, one that can carry a sentence of 20 years to life.
While Antony didn’t elaborate on the safety concerns, Herndon has a criminal history that includes convictions for assault and battery, entering a stranger’s vehicle and carjacking.
His 2019 sentencing on the carjacking charge allowed about 19 years of a roughly 21-year sentence to be suspended on a condition of good behavior for 15 years. Even before the Belmont allegations, Herndon has been convicted of six probation violations, which a shooting conviction would only exacerbate.
A grand jury will examine the three pending charges on Oct. 21.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com
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