Juvenile I-64 shooter pleads guilty

Calvin R. Trice
Published: May 7, 2008

CHARLOTTESVILLE — The juvenile charged with the Interstate 64 shootings pleaded guilty to five counts and acknowledged a role in all 15 charges against him in court Wednesday.
The boy is a 16-year-old from Crozet identified in court Wednesday as Brandon Dawson.
Dawson is scheduled to return to the local Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court on May 28 to find out his punishment. He is being held at Blue Ridge Detention Center in Albemarle.
Police said he accompanied 19-year-old Slade Allen Woodson, of Afton, during shootings along I-64 and in western Albemarle that began just after midnight on March 27, launching a 29-hour manhunt.
Because the case is being handled in juvenile court, the maximum punishment Dawson can receive is detention until the eve of his 21st birthday.
His lawyer, Charlottesville attorney Dana M. Slater, said her client thought the plea agreement was in his best interest.
“He has acknowledged his responsibility in the events of March 27 ... from the beginning,” Slater said after the hearing. “The young man and his family are a good family and believe in being truthful.”
Dawson pleaded guilty to five counts of shooting into occupied vehicles. As part of a plea agreement, prosecutor Darby Lowe dropped seven charges.
Dawson admitted enough evidence to establish his guilt on three other counts of shooting at houses but will not be punished for them if he remains on good behavior.
The discharges inflicted minor injuries to two drivers.
Police closed the highway for hours while the search for the shooters began. The two were apprehended early the next morning on a horse farm in western Albemarle, where Dawson lived with his father.
Dawson subsequently acknowledged firing one shot from an overpass off I-64 and firing shots at two houses in western Albemarle, said Lowe, an assistant Albemarle commonwealth’s attorney.
In addition to the 15 felonies that Dawson faced, Woodson is charged with four additional counts stemming from shootings around the same time in Waynesboro.
Dawson has been fully cooperative, Lowe told Judge Susan L. Whitlock.
“The defendant has accepted responsibility for all events since the onset of the investigation,” she said.
Slater said after the hearings that her client acknowledges the seriousness of the shootings and the anxiety during the manhunt that was reminiscent of the sniper-style shootings in the Washington region in 2002.
“I know that he would like to go back in time and make different decisions,” she said.
Calvin R. Trice is a staff writer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.