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Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.
Teen Gets Life Plus 40 Years For ‘Heinous, Reprehensible, Evil’ Attack
Posted by:
McGruff
()
Date: August 28, 2011 09:38PM
Teen Gets Life Plus 40 Years For ‘Heinous, Reprehensible, Evil’ Attack
Posted: Wednesday, August 24, 2011 2:48 pm | Updated: 9:42 am, Thu Aug 25, 2011.
http://www.leesburg2day.com/news/article_b48a3364-ce82-11e0-9c1a-001cc4c002e0.html
It was the conclusion of a tense and emotional day in Loudoun Circuit Court when Judge H. Chamblin handed down a sentence of life plus 40 years to the 19-year-old charged in the March 2009 attack that left William Bennett dead and his wife Cynthia with horrific, life-threatening injuries.
Jaime Ayala, who was 17 at the time of the attack, pleaded guilty to second degree murder and aggravated malicious wounding in February, only days before his first-degree murder trial was scheduled to begin.
Chamblin said he had spent much time attempting to find the words to describe the beating attack, perpetrated by Ayala and two other men.
"Heinous. Reprehensible. Evil. Inexcusable. Unjustifiable. Detestable. Disgusting," he said. "And they don't even come close to how this court feels."
And the court's feelings, Chamblin continued, do not begin to show the feelings of the Bennett family, or Cynthia Bennett, who continues to recover from her injuries, or of the greater Loudoun community.
"The community doesn't deserve this. The community deserves to be protected from that and people are involved in that," he said, adding later, "I think the public needs to be safe and it will be safer without you being around."
Immediately before sentencing, Ayala read a statement he wrote. He stated that he "sincerely apologized" to the Bennetts, the court and the community for his actions and said there is "no justification" for what he did.
"Now I just want to make it right and change my life...I want to become someone I believe in." He asked Chamblin to "please give me a second opportunity" to live his life right.
William and Cynthia Bennett were attacked in the early morning hours on Sunday, March 22, 2009, as they walked along Riverside Parkway in Lansdowne. Authorities were called to Riverside Parkway and Rocky Creek Drive for report of a suspicious white van. Shortly after arriving on the scene, deputies found William Bennett's body near the Goose Creek bridge. On the stand Wednesday, 2nd Lt. Christopher Hines, who was called to the scene that morning, testified that deputies viewed a red stain, later determined to be blood, on the fence on the opposite side of Riverside Parkway. While searching the wooded area behind the fence with flashlights, Hines said something "caught my attention."
"Something raised itself up into view," Hines said. "I didn't know what it was but the other supervisor said it was a person. As we got there the person fell back."
Cynthia Bennett had been savagely beaten, but she was alive.
Two other men have been named in the attack. Darwin G. Bowman, now 20, is facing capital charges for first degree murder and rape. Anthony R. Roberts, who was 20 at the time of the attack, has not yet been charged, but testimony in preliminary hearings, search warrants and Wednesday indicated his involvement in the attack.
Roberts is serving time for the April 15, 2009, break-in at Loudoun Guns in Leesburg and a string of commercial burglaries that took place in Middleburg the night before Bennett was killed. There is no status of limitations on felonies in Virginia.
Cynthia Bennett was airlifted to Inova Fairfax Hospital, where Dr. Howard David Reines was called to meet her. On the stand, Reines described in gruesome detail the extent of her injuries, which included broken facial bones, serious lacerations to her head, and a brutally ripped hole in her pelvic region.
"In 30 years I have never seen anything like it," Reines said of the injuries.
In addition to her wounds, Bennett was suffering from extremely low body temperature-83 degrees-and abnormal blood levels, including a 6.8 pH level and very high lactic acid levels. Each of those, Reines testified, is usually fatal.
"Cynthia Bennett has basically redefined for all us here what it means to be a survivor," Commonwealth's Attorney Jim Plowman said in his closing argument. "Medically, she shouldn't probably be with us today. But she is."
Taking the stand, Cynthia Bennett said the first thing she remembers is being transported from Inova Fairfax to Mt. Vernon Hospital a few weeks after the attack. When asked by Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Colleen Hardy when she first learned her husband had been killed, Bennett said she thought she just knew.
"I remember having these dreams when I was under...not seeing the incident, but I knew he was gone. I knew from this vision that someone had killed him," she said.
William Bennett was a family man, she told Chamblin. "He loved his girls. He loved me. He loved his country." Bennett spent 22 years in the military and worked with the CIA.
"He would walk and hike the trails. Not just your local parks, the Appalachian Trail. He hiked the entire thing by himself," she said. "He was working on doing the Continental Divide Trail. He had done the southern half...and he had plans to finish the trail."
Cynthia, now 57, and William Bennett had plans for their retirement. He had already retired and was working intermittently, she was still working full time in 2009. But they had planned to move out west. They wanted to buy land, she said, and build a home, with rooms for homes for their two daughters, Jennifer and Samantha, to come visit.
"That's gone," she said, turning to Chamblin. "Now I have to come up with a new plan. A whole new future."
Sitting straight in the witness box, wearing khakis and a green-grey cardigan, Bennett's voice was strong. She said she misses her husband, her companion, her confidant. But she does not want to look back; she does not want to spend time remembering. Instead she wants to focus on the future.
"Everything changed," she said. "I need to make a new life...that's what keeps me going. I need to start a new phase, so make it exciting, make it challenging."
Bennett has fought a hard road back from her injuries, but said she is determined to improve. She was an independent woman before the attack, someone who did not like to rely on others for help. Now she walks with a cane, and cannot even get groceries from the store and to the apartment she shares with her daughter without help.
"I have come a long way... I consider walking with a cane a success," she said, adding, "People look at me differently. They see the cane and assume I have a handicap...I am just living in a different world than I used to."
She has dealt with numerous medical procedures, including plastic surgery to fix the broken bones in her face. She has seen gynecological and rectal specialists as well as a cardiovascular specialist, for an aneurysm on her right side that had to be repaired. As a result of the savage assault, she has a colostomy bag and she has nerve damage in her left leg that is likely permanent.
Jennifer and Samantha Bennett, both adults, testified about the care they have given to their mother since she has been released from the hospital-neither of them working for a long time to aid their mother. It was Jennifer Bennett who was first contacted by law enforcement and asked to come to Fairfax Hospital to identify her mother. At that time, investigators did not have confirmation the woman they had found was Cynthia Bennett.
"My mom didn't even look like my mom. Her face was swollen. They were pumping her full of fluids," Jennifer Bennett testified. "But then I looked at her hands. And I could tell they were her hands."
The Bennetts' younger daughter Samantha, who brought her mom to live with her after the attack, told the court about the first few days.
"I was waking up every hour to check on her to make sure she was still breathing," she said. "I imagine it's like having a new child. You just are worried and constantly checking on them."
Samantha Bennett showed a bit of anger at the damage caused to her family by the assailants. "We just have to sit back and wait for days like this where we have to relive it all," she said through tears. "And it sucks...but we get through it."
Samantha and Jennifer Bennett both talked of a father that loved them deeply, and pushed them to better themselves in everything they did. They talked of the love he had for their mother.
"I like to think that the reason why she's here today is because he was there with her in that moment," Samantha Bennett said.
They talked of William Bennett's love for his country and commitment to military service, how he even returned to overseas duty after his retirement because he believed that's where he needed to be to protect his country.
"And then he goes for a walk down the road and the same people he swore to protect take his life away for no [explicative] reason," Samantha Bennett said.
Chamblin set Ayala's two sentences, life for the aggravated malicious wounding charge and 40 years for second degree murder, to be served consecutively, and consecutively for any other sentences. Ayala is serving time for a home invasion robbery that occurred only five days after the Bennett attack, and a mob gang assault that occurred only a few weeks prior.
Chamblin also declined to suspend any portion of the sentence, as requested by Ayala's defense attorney Corinne Magee.
Magee argued that Ayala was only an accomplice, the driver, the morning of the attack on the Bennetts, and while acknowledging that he helped burn evidence after the fact, noted he was not responsible for the physical act. Sentencing guidelines, she said, were meant for the perpetrators, not for accomplices. She pointed out that Bowman's trial had been continually pushed back, and will now not take place until April, and that Roberts has not even been tried.
Ayala's brother Moises Ayala Lopez testified that he saw Bowman and Roberts in his brother's room the morning of the attack. While he knew Bowman, Roberts he said he had never seen him with Ayala before. "I know he is a troubled person," Lopez said. "He is very violent, crazy, delusional, not fit to be in our community." But Lopez said, an attack such as what happened, is not in Ayala's blood.
Magee said there is "no reason to believe [Ayala] had any clue that Mr. and Mrs. Bennett were going to suffer the blows of an evil man." Magee also noted that Ayala, from his first interview, had been willing to help make sure the parties responsible for the attack were held accountable. But, so far, he is the only one paying facing the consequences.
"And the wrath of the Bennetts, the wrath of the Bennetts' friends, the wrath of the county is all coming down on his head," she said, noting that without Bowman and Roberts paying a price. "We sit here with the person who was the driver."
But Plowman said that Ayala had plenty of time to decide he wanted to change and "make it right" between the March attack and his April arrest. He told the court of the home invasion robbery Ayala was involved in five days later, and the gang fight, six days after that.
"If ever a time or opportunity to make choices about the people you are associating with, that was the time," Plowman said. "If he ever had remorse, if he ever wanted to make it right, those five days probably would have been a good time to do it."
Later Plowman pointed out that Ayala only "talked when he got caught. If he wanted to make it right he would have come forward on his own."
That view was shared by Chamblin, who told Ayala, "In my mind, you knew, maybe not exactly what was going to happen, but I think you had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen when you stopped that van the first time and let Mr. Roberts and Mr. Bowman out. You let it happen. And you didn't do anything about it after it occurred. That was the time to make it right, Mr. Ayala. Not now."
Attachments:
Posted: Wednesday, August 24, 2011 2:48 pm | Updated: 9:42 am, Thu Aug 25, 2011.
http://www.leesburg2day.com/news/article_b48a3364-ce82-11e0-9c1a-001cc4c002e0.html
It was the conclusion of a tense and emotional day in Loudoun Circuit Court when Judge H. Chamblin handed down a sentence of life plus 40 years to the 19-year-old charged in the March 2009 attack that left William Bennett dead and his wife Cynthia with horrific, life-threatening injuries.
Jaime Ayala, who was 17 at the time of the attack, pleaded guilty to second degree murder and aggravated malicious wounding in February, only days before his first-degree murder trial was scheduled to begin.
Chamblin said he had spent much time attempting to find the words to describe the beating attack, perpetrated by Ayala and two other men.
"Heinous. Reprehensible. Evil. Inexcusable. Unjustifiable. Detestable. Disgusting," he said. "And they don't even come close to how this court feels."
And the court's feelings, Chamblin continued, do not begin to show the feelings of the Bennett family, or Cynthia Bennett, who continues to recover from her injuries, or of the greater Loudoun community.
"The community doesn't deserve this. The community deserves to be protected from that and people are involved in that," he said, adding later, "I think the public needs to be safe and it will be safer without you being around."
Immediately before sentencing, Ayala read a statement he wrote. He stated that he "sincerely apologized" to the Bennetts, the court and the community for his actions and said there is "no justification" for what he did.
"Now I just want to make it right and change my life...I want to become someone I believe in." He asked Chamblin to "please give me a second opportunity" to live his life right.
William and Cynthia Bennett were attacked in the early morning hours on Sunday, March 22, 2009, as they walked along Riverside Parkway in Lansdowne. Authorities were called to Riverside Parkway and Rocky Creek Drive for report of a suspicious white van. Shortly after arriving on the scene, deputies found William Bennett's body near the Goose Creek bridge. On the stand Wednesday, 2nd Lt. Christopher Hines, who was called to the scene that morning, testified that deputies viewed a red stain, later determined to be blood, on the fence on the opposite side of Riverside Parkway. While searching the wooded area behind the fence with flashlights, Hines said something "caught my attention."
"Something raised itself up into view," Hines said. "I didn't know what it was but the other supervisor said it was a person. As we got there the person fell back."
Cynthia Bennett had been savagely beaten, but she was alive.
Two other men have been named in the attack. Darwin G. Bowman, now 20, is facing capital charges for first degree murder and rape. Anthony R. Roberts, who was 20 at the time of the attack, has not yet been charged, but testimony in preliminary hearings, search warrants and Wednesday indicated his involvement in the attack.
Roberts is serving time for the April 15, 2009, break-in at Loudoun Guns in Leesburg and a string of commercial burglaries that took place in Middleburg the night before Bennett was killed. There is no status of limitations on felonies in Virginia.
Cynthia Bennett was airlifted to Inova Fairfax Hospital, where Dr. Howard David Reines was called to meet her. On the stand, Reines described in gruesome detail the extent of her injuries, which included broken facial bones, serious lacerations to her head, and a brutally ripped hole in her pelvic region.
"In 30 years I have never seen anything like it," Reines said of the injuries.
In addition to her wounds, Bennett was suffering from extremely low body temperature-83 degrees-and abnormal blood levels, including a 6.8 pH level and very high lactic acid levels. Each of those, Reines testified, is usually fatal.
"Cynthia Bennett has basically redefined for all us here what it means to be a survivor," Commonwealth's Attorney Jim Plowman said in his closing argument. "Medically, she shouldn't probably be with us today. But she is."
Taking the stand, Cynthia Bennett said the first thing she remembers is being transported from Inova Fairfax to Mt. Vernon Hospital a few weeks after the attack. When asked by Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Colleen Hardy when she first learned her husband had been killed, Bennett said she thought she just knew.
"I remember having these dreams when I was under...not seeing the incident, but I knew he was gone. I knew from this vision that someone had killed him," she said.
William Bennett was a family man, she told Chamblin. "He loved his girls. He loved me. He loved his country." Bennett spent 22 years in the military and worked with the CIA.
"He would walk and hike the trails. Not just your local parks, the Appalachian Trail. He hiked the entire thing by himself," she said. "He was working on doing the Continental Divide Trail. He had done the southern half...and he had plans to finish the trail."
Cynthia, now 57, and William Bennett had plans for their retirement. He had already retired and was working intermittently, she was still working full time in 2009. But they had planned to move out west. They wanted to buy land, she said, and build a home, with rooms for homes for their two daughters, Jennifer and Samantha, to come visit.
"That's gone," she said, turning to Chamblin. "Now I have to come up with a new plan. A whole new future."
Sitting straight in the witness box, wearing khakis and a green-grey cardigan, Bennett's voice was strong. She said she misses her husband, her companion, her confidant. But she does not want to look back; she does not want to spend time remembering. Instead she wants to focus on the future.
"Everything changed," she said. "I need to make a new life...that's what keeps me going. I need to start a new phase, so make it exciting, make it challenging."
Bennett has fought a hard road back from her injuries, but said she is determined to improve. She was an independent woman before the attack, someone who did not like to rely on others for help. Now she walks with a cane, and cannot even get groceries from the store and to the apartment she shares with her daughter without help.
"I have come a long way... I consider walking with a cane a success," she said, adding, "People look at me differently. They see the cane and assume I have a handicap...I am just living in a different world than I used to."
She has dealt with numerous medical procedures, including plastic surgery to fix the broken bones in her face. She has seen gynecological and rectal specialists as well as a cardiovascular specialist, for an aneurysm on her right side that had to be repaired. As a result of the savage assault, she has a colostomy bag and she has nerve damage in her left leg that is likely permanent.
Jennifer and Samantha Bennett, both adults, testified about the care they have given to their mother since she has been released from the hospital-neither of them working for a long time to aid their mother. It was Jennifer Bennett who was first contacted by law enforcement and asked to come to Fairfax Hospital to identify her mother. At that time, investigators did not have confirmation the woman they had found was Cynthia Bennett.
"My mom didn't even look like my mom. Her face was swollen. They were pumping her full of fluids," Jennifer Bennett testified. "But then I looked at her hands. And I could tell they were her hands."
The Bennetts' younger daughter Samantha, who brought her mom to live with her after the attack, told the court about the first few days.
"I was waking up every hour to check on her to make sure she was still breathing," she said. "I imagine it's like having a new child. You just are worried and constantly checking on them."
Samantha Bennett showed a bit of anger at the damage caused to her family by the assailants. "We just have to sit back and wait for days like this where we have to relive it all," she said through tears. "And it sucks...but we get through it."
Samantha and Jennifer Bennett both talked of a father that loved them deeply, and pushed them to better themselves in everything they did. They talked of the love he had for their mother.
"I like to think that the reason why she's here today is because he was there with her in that moment," Samantha Bennett said.
They talked of William Bennett's love for his country and commitment to military service, how he even returned to overseas duty after his retirement because he believed that's where he needed to be to protect his country.
"And then he goes for a walk down the road and the same people he swore to protect take his life away for no [explicative] reason," Samantha Bennett said.
Chamblin set Ayala's two sentences, life for the aggravated malicious wounding charge and 40 years for second degree murder, to be served consecutively, and consecutively for any other sentences. Ayala is serving time for a home invasion robbery that occurred only five days after the Bennett attack, and a mob gang assault that occurred only a few weeks prior.
Chamblin also declined to suspend any portion of the sentence, as requested by Ayala's defense attorney Corinne Magee.
Magee argued that Ayala was only an accomplice, the driver, the morning of the attack on the Bennetts, and while acknowledging that he helped burn evidence after the fact, noted he was not responsible for the physical act. Sentencing guidelines, she said, were meant for the perpetrators, not for accomplices. She pointed out that Bowman's trial had been continually pushed back, and will now not take place until April, and that Roberts has not even been tried.
Ayala's brother Moises Ayala Lopez testified that he saw Bowman and Roberts in his brother's room the morning of the attack. While he knew Bowman, Roberts he said he had never seen him with Ayala before. "I know he is a troubled person," Lopez said. "He is very violent, crazy, delusional, not fit to be in our community." But Lopez said, an attack such as what happened, is not in Ayala's blood.
Magee said there is "no reason to believe [Ayala] had any clue that Mr. and Mrs. Bennett were going to suffer the blows of an evil man." Magee also noted that Ayala, from his first interview, had been willing to help make sure the parties responsible for the attack were held accountable. But, so far, he is the only one paying facing the consequences.
"And the wrath of the Bennetts, the wrath of the Bennetts' friends, the wrath of the county is all coming down on his head," she said, noting that without Bowman and Roberts paying a price. "We sit here with the person who was the driver."
But Plowman said that Ayala had plenty of time to decide he wanted to change and "make it right" between the March attack and his April arrest. He told the court of the home invasion robbery Ayala was involved in five days later, and the gang fight, six days after that.
"If ever a time or opportunity to make choices about the people you are associating with, that was the time," Plowman said. "If he ever had remorse, if he ever wanted to make it right, those five days probably would have been a good time to do it."
Later Plowman pointed out that Ayala only "talked when he got caught. If he wanted to make it right he would have come forward on his own."
That view was shared by Chamblin, who told Ayala, "In my mind, you knew, maybe not exactly what was going to happen, but I think you had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen when you stopped that van the first time and let Mr. Roberts and Mr. Bowman out. You let it happen. And you didn't do anything about it after it occurred. That was the time to make it right, Mr. Ayala. Not now."
Attachments:
Re: Teen Gets Life Plus 40 Years For ‘Heinous, Reprehensible, Evil’ Attack
Posted by:
Naked Truth
()
Date: August 30, 2011 11:58AM
Fucking SCUM. I hope he gets the Dahmer treatment in prison.
Re: Teen Gets Life Plus 40 Years For ‘Heinous, Reprehensible, Evil’ Attack
Posted by:
BigK12
()
Date: September 08, 2011 10:37AM
Naked Truth Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Fucking SCUM. I hope he gets the Dahmer treatment
> in prison.
What a surprise another Mexican!
-------------------------------------------------------
> Fucking SCUM. I hope he gets the Dahmer treatment
> in prison.
What a surprise another Mexican!