Man gets 15-year term in slaying

By: Mark Bowes | Richmond Times Dispatch
Published: January 24, 2009

The simple words of a 3-year-old Richmond girl helped convict a Henrico County man yesterday in the beating death of the girl's 18-month-old brother.

The girl witnessed her mother's live-in boyfriend fatally beat her brother after the child accidentally defecated on the stairs of their home. The girl then told a neighbor and police.

Faced with the young girl's statement and corroborating medical evidence, Garnell Stevenson III pleaded guilty yesterday to second-degree murder, reduced from first-degree, and felony child abuse in the July 24 death of Javon Omari Deleo.

Richmond Circuit Judge Theodore J. Markow accepted Stevenson's pleas and sentenced him to 15 years in prison under terms of a plea agreement.

The agreement called for 30 years in prison with 15 suspended for second-degree murder, and 10 years with 10 suspended for felony child neglect. He also was ordered to pay $4,257 in restitution to Virginia's Criminal Injuries Compensation Fund, which paid for the child's funeral.

In a dispassionate voice, Stevenson, 25, apologized to the Deleo family for the hurt he caused. "I know an apology won't bring him back."

According to evidence, Javon and his 3-year-old sister had been left in Stevenson's care while their mother, Myasia Deleo, was working at a local fast-food restaurant.

Stevenson called Deleo that afternoon to tell her that Javon had fallen down the stairs at her home in Richmond's Creighton Court public-housing complex in the city's East End. After summoning a neighbor, Stevenson fled before emergency workers arrived.

Javon was found unresponsive and pronounced dead at VCU Medical Center.

The state Medical Examiner's Office later determined that Javon's injuries were not consistent with a fall down a stairway. The child apparently was struck only once, but with such force that it severed the child's vena cava artery, which feeds blood to the heart.

"He could have been punched or he could have been kicked -- some kind of blunt force to his midsection, the doctors say," said Richmond prosecutor Mary Langer. "He likely was struck when he was up against something, so the force of the blow was maintained within his abdominal cavity."

The case turned on a statement made by Javon's sister, who was found by a neighbor cowering in a bathtub. After the neighbor arrived to help the dying boy, the girl explained what happened: Javon "pooped on the stairs and 'Nut' beat him." Nut is short for Peanut -- Stevenson's nickname.

"It was good work by the people on the scene to get all the information they could on what happened," Langer said of the efforts to get the child's statement.

Police found a shirt inside the home that appeared to have fecal material on it, Langer said. Javon had either had a bowel movement on the shirt or it had been used to clean the stairs.

During an earlier evidentiary hearing in the case, a judge ruled that Javon's sister's statements could be used against Stevenson, and that "pretty much brought it home for the defendant that things weren't going to go his way."

Stevenson told police after his arrest that he fled the house, leaving the dying boy behind, because he had a warrant out for his arrest for failing to pay child support in Henrico.

Deleo, Javon's mother, was initially charged with felony child neglect because of a 20-minute delay in getting medical attention for her child, but a judge dismissed the count after a preliminary hearing in October.

Contact Mark Bowes at (804) 649-6450 or mbowes@timesdispatch.com.