Gustavo Junior Laurent may not be comfortable with his reputation as as child sex offender.
After three prior convictions for failing to maintain his registry on Virginia’s list of sex offenders, the 41-year-old is facing another such charge. And in late July, he shot a man who, according to a Charlottesville prosecutor, taunted him for his past.
"It was related to Mr. Laurent’s criminal history, specifically his status as a child sex offender," Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Nina-Alice Antony told a judge at a recent hearing.
Antony said that grainy nighttime surveillance footage shows part of the June 28 altercation in which a man can be seen swinging and knocking Laurent’s glasses off shortly before Laurent shoots him. That man was later identified as 33-year-old Damon Emanuel Banks.
Police reported the shooting shortly after it happened, around 1:38 a.m., and pointed to the parking lot in the 100 block of East Market Street as the setting.
A search warrant for Laurent’s phone indicated that a friend of Banks approached a passing patrol officer to advise that Banks had been shot in the abdomen by someone named "Gustavo" who was a sex offender.
Text messages found on a phone showed investigators that Laurent perpetrated the shooting, Antony said in court, and he was arrested about a week later and charged with malicious wounding. But there were barriers to a conviction, she said.
For starters, Antony told the Charlottesville Circuit Court, the video was too grainy to identify individuals. Moreover, the victim balked at testifying.
Antony said that Banks, despite recovering from his injuries, was grieving over his mother’s death and that he got "rattled" by the prospect of speaking in court. Even an arrest warrant demanding that Banks show cause for skipping a planned preliminary hearing couldn’t convince him to come to court, Antony said.
Another problem was that the video shows Banks knocking Laurent’s glasses off, and Laurent indicated that he would claim self-defense.
"Certainly, the commonwealth would have contested whether that rose to self-defense," Antony told the judge.
But without testimony from Banks, she told the court that a plea deal was the only viable option.
"It is very much a compromise plea agreement," she said. "We had a substantial risk at trial of not being able to prove the case without a cooperative victim."
In court, Laurent’s attorney, Bryan Jones, noted some concerns of his own.
"Had the case gone to trial, we certainly would have had a very different view of the facts," said Jones, without elaborating.
The deal approved Dec. 5 allowed Laurent to plead guilty to a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm and serve a five-month sentence.
In addition to tying Laurent to the shooting, the detective who obtained the search warrant on Laurent’s phone, Courtney Lowe, had expressed hope that the phone might show how Laurent, with multiple felony convictions, including cocaine distribution and grand larceny, obtained a firearm. However, nothing was said in court about that, and Laurent declined to make a statement in court.
According to the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, where he has been held since his early August arrest, Laurent is slated for release on Jan. 4.
Upon accepting the weapons possession plea, Judge Claude Worrell said that he was including four years and seven months of suspended prison time that could be added to the five-month active sentence if Laurent runs afoul of the law during a five-year period of good behavior.
Already, Laurent is slated to return soon to court to deal with another accusation of violating a previous good behavior mandate. On Jan. 9, he’ll be asked to to explain his most recent alleged failure to comply with Virginia’s law requiring sex offenders register with the state police.
Court records show that Laurent’s sex crime was a 2011 conviction for nonforceful carnal knowledge of a 13-year-old girl, what many call statutory rape.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com