Marcos Chavez Gonzalez, who was 26 and resided at 146 Southridge Road at the time of the killings, continues to be held in the Surry County Jail without privilege of bond on four counts of first-degree murder.
“Right now, we do not have a date set for it,” a spokeswoman at the Surry County District Attorney’s Office said Wednesday regarding the trial of Gonzalez. The next session of Superior Court in Dobson, where the case will be heard, begins on April 26 but the murder case is not on the calendar for that two-week term, she said.
In all, four people have been charged in connection with the fatal shootings outside Wood’s TV on Worth Street last Nov. 1, including a man whose arrest as an alleged accessory has only recently surfaced, Justin Conrad Atkins.
Atkins, 21, of Holly Springs Road, is charged with four felony counts of accessory after the fact of the shootings.
Warrants against Atkins actually were issued last Nov. 10, nine days after the four deaths; however, his involvement in the case has come to light only recently after that was made known through an anonymous call to The Mount Airy News.
“Basically, he aided the shooter,” Detective Paul Barker of the Mount Airy Police Department, who has been involved with the investigation of the slayings, said this week. However, Barker did not elaborate on what help Atkins allegedly rendered to the murder suspect.
“I can’t get into that,” he said. “He did assist him in some way after the (shootings).”
Checks of arrest reports issued by city police last November found no mention of the charges against Atkins. He initially was confined in the Surry County Jail under a $50,000 secured bond, but was released under that amount on Dec. 9, a jail spokeswoman said Wednesday.
Two other people also were charged with four felony counts of accessory after the fact, Gregory Brandon Holt, 35, and his mother, Kathy Lee Barnett-Young, 57, both of Claudville, Va. Their arrests were announced last Nov. 11, and both later were freed after posting bond, the Surry jail spokeswoman said.
Authorities have said that on the day of the shootings, a man gave Gonzalez a ride to a motel in Henry County, Va., where that individual is said to have used a fake identity in an attempt to rent a room for the fugitive. Gonzalez was arrested hours later after officers swarmed the motel upon receiving a tip as to his whereabouts.
The four separate accessory charges filed against the three people represent one count for each of the victims.
They were shot with a high-powered rifle in the parking lot of Wood’s TV on a Sunday afternoon, with a number of witnesses present. No official motive has been released for the killings, but unconfirmed reports have indicated that the incident stemmed from a love affair gone bad.
Several days after the deaths, an official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said that Gonzalez was here illegally. He had been deported in 2007 after serving nearly five years in the North Carolina prison system for felony kidnapping and probation violations.
The man, who also had been required to register as a sex offender, later re-entered the country illegally, the ICE official has said. At the time of the killings, Gonzalez was employed by a construction company in Lexington, Masonry Management, Mount Airy police have said.
Contact Tom Joyce at tjoyce@mtairynews.com or at 719-1924.
Post a Comment
