Yet another shooting rampage.
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Deadly rampage
Gunman caught after foot chase; faces murder, carjacking charges
By MIKE CHALMERS / The News Journal
04/08/2005
Every morning, Jamell Weston walked his 6-year-old nephew to the bus stop at Carvel Gardens apartments in Laurel. Thursday wasn't any different.
Then the bright spring day turned tragic for Weston.
A gunman, wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying several clips of ammunition, fatally shot him and injured another man outside the apartment complex, beginning about an hour of terror. When it was finally over, a minister was dead and three others were wounded. The spree targeted motorists, forced the region's schools to lock students inside their classrooms and panicked parents in two states.
The gunman was captured after a foot chase in a Salisbury, Md., neighborhood. Police identified the suspect as 22-year-old Allison Lamont Norman of Seaford, who has a criminal history ranging from disorderly conduct to drug use to weapons charges.
Maryland authorities charged him Thursday with first-degree murder, carjacking and a series of handgun violations. He is being held without bail at Wicomico County Detention Center. Delaware officials said they would charge Norman when he is extradited to Delaware.
On Wednesday, Norman was supposed to appear in Wicomico County Circuit Court on a weapons charge but he failed to show up, said his attorney, Purcell S. Luke, of Salisbury. A bench warrant was issued for his arrest. Authorities said they know Norman spent that night at a Laurel apartment complex where the first victim lived, because he was involved in a domestic dispute.
But a day later, police still were trying to piece together the details of what sparked the shooting spree. "It appears all the shootings were random," said Wicomico County, Md., Sheriff R.H. Nelms.
What they do know is that during the hourlong rampage, the suspect held an elderly Salisbury couple hostage in their home, shot two pit bulls and took a third with him when he carjacked, then killed, his last victim.
Moments before he was caught, a Salisbury woman heard the suspect yell out his name and ask for help. "They're trying to kill me," he screamed. "My name is Lamont Norman. I'm from Seaford, Delaware. I didn't do nothing!"
"I can't believe he's doing the things they say he did," said Norman's girlfriend Ashley Dean, 18, of Seaford.
In a letter to Sussex County Superior Court Judge T. Henley Graves last year, Norman's mother, Alice Stanford, claimed, "He doesn't even own a gun."
Though many details remain unclear, accounts by police, witnesses and victims' families paint a timeline of the shooting spree. The day's events began unfolding a little before 8 a.m., when Jamell Weston walked his nephew to the bus stop. According to those accounts:
8 a.m., Laurel
Jamell Weston, 24, and his mother, Iris, have lived in the Carvel Gardens apartment complex for about five years.
After Jamell took his nephew to the bus stop, he walked back to his apartment to get the boy a jacket and returned to give it to the kindergartner, who got on the bus to North Laurel Elementary School.
That's when Sierra Doughty, 18, heard five gunshots.
"I thought someone was just playing with a gun," Doughty said. "Then I heard people screaming that someone was shot. I ran out the door and saw [Weston]."
Another bullet hit Marcus Cannon, 18, in the arm, leaving a minor wound.
Weston wasn't that lucky. Someone ran to tell Iris Weston that her son had collapsed. "They didn't tell me he was shot," Weston said. "I went up to him and saw the blood."
Doughty said Weston "was sort of walking, stumbling back. People told him to sit down, so he sat against a car and died."
Weston and neighbors don't think Jamell was targeted.
"It had to be a mistake, because he was somebody who was innocent," neighbor Datiana Reynoso said. "He was a nice guy. He didn't hurt nobody."
As fear and confusion spread, schools in Laurel, Delmar and Wicomico County, Md., locked students inside.
"The first instinct that came to my mind was to pick them up," said Melissa Brown, who has two children in the Laurel School District.
"They really didn't know what was going on," said parent Beverly Horner of Salisbury.
8:14 a.m., Laurel
About that time, Cedrick Harris, 43, of Bridgeville, walked out of his girlfriend's apartment to his black 2003 Ford Focus. He wanted to get quarters for the laundry machine. He left the keys in the car.
"When I went back a few minutes later, my car was gone," said Harris, who watched as the suspect sped away.
Within minutes of the shooting, police arrived, and Harris told them he thought the gunman might have stolen his car.
Norman had his young daughter with him. Police aren't certain how, but the girl eventually ended up at school.
Next, Norman drove to Discountland, a strip mall housing a nail salon, a church and Tyndall's Casual Furniture.
Anthony White, 45, of Seaford, had just dropped off his truck at Bob's Speed Shop on U.S. 13. A man pulled up in a Ford Focus and asked him if he needed a ride.
"Are you going to Seaford?" White asked.
The man pulled out a gun and shot him in the leg and stomach. White left a trail of blood across the parking lot as he dragged himself about 70 yards from a set of mailboxes to a green GMC pickup truck. After police and paramedics arrived, White was airlifted to Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury, Md., where he was in stable condition Thursday night.
The gunman headed south.
8:38 a.m., Delmar
About five miles south lies Delmar, split by the Delaware-Maryland border. About 1,400 people live on the Delaware side and another 1,900 live in Maryland, separated by Del. 54.
The gunman, driving behind a garbage truck, leaned out the window, yelled at the driver and fired one shot at him, Maryland State police spokesman Greg Shipley said.
The shot missed the driver but shattered a window, tore through a stereo speaker and lodged in the living room wall of a home at 606 State St., where Christina Lowe was asleep on the couch.
"If she'd been sitting up, it would have killed her," said Kenny Everett, Lowe's boyfriend.
She wasn't injured.
The gunman continued south, firing randomly along the way.
Bullets hit several cars, but no one was injured.
8:45 a.m., Salisbury
A few miles down the road, the gunman reached Salisbury, a college town of 24,000 people and the commercial hub of the Eastern Shore.
On Jersey Road, the gunman shot into a van. None of the three people in the van were injured.
On Adventist Drive, students at North Salisbury Elementary School were just beginning classes for the day. The gunman fired as many as four shots into nearby vehicles. One bullet hit Marsha L. Henderson, who lives in the 900 block of Queen St.
She was treated at Peninsula and released.
In a quiet, middle class neighborhood on Nokomis Avenue, the suspect ditched the black Ford Focus and fled on foot, firing shots into four homes. At one home, he shot two pit bulls, killing one and injuring another. He took a third pit bull with him.
After taking his stepdaughter to preschool, DaVondale M. Peters, 28, was on his way home to the 400 block of Truitt St. in his Chevrolet Suburban, when he was assaulted by the gunman. The suspect put the dog in the SUV with Peters, a local minister.
With Peters at the wheel, the two men traveled to the intersection of Miami and Mohawk avenues, where witnesses say they saw the two men arguing. The suspect got out of the Suburban, shot and killed Peters, who was still inside. The out-of-control Suburban crashed into a house on Miami Ave.
No one was injured.
Back on foot, the gunman fired into several more vehicles, striking a white van driven by Carla D. Green, 33, of the 800 block of Miami Ave. A bullet hit Green in the upper torso, and she lost control of the van, which came to rest in the front yard of a home on Booth Street.
Green was in critical condition Thursday night. Green's young daughter, who was with her at the time, was not injured.
9 a.m., Salisbury
"All I heard was pow, pow, pow, pow, pow," said neighbor Michelle Moss, who heard the gunshots.
The suspect then began knocking on doors, trying to get inside one of several townhouses. Moss heard the suspect yell his name and claim someone was trying to kill him.
Kim Barkely said her granddaughter and the girl's other grandmother hit the floor when they heard the gunfire.
The suspect ran inside a townhouse and held an elderly couple hostage for several minutes, before running out of the home and leading Wicomico County sheriff's deputies on a chase. A block later, deputies found him hiding behind a car.
He didn't fight them. He was out of bullets.
