Accused killer’s changing story helped lead to Henrico murder conviction

A murder defendant's changing story to police managed to place him at the scene of a drive-by shooting and narrow the number of unsolved cases in one of the region's most crime-ridden areas.

A Henrico County jury Thursday night returned a first-degree murder conviction and recommended a life sentence for Lamar D. Jordan, 26.

Jordan, of no fixed address but familiar to law-enforcement officers because of his red Acura sedan, told police that the gunfire that killed 21-year-old Rayvell B. Fitzgerald on Nov. 7 in the Essex Village apartment complex likely was meant for him.

"He said that he'd pulled a gun on suspects in a burglary and they tried to shoot him," Henrico Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Owen Conway said.

Jordan said he had been fired on multiple times but earlier told police that he wasn't in the area, according to trial testimony.

Investigators found only one shell casing at the scene of Fitzgerald's murder -- he died of a single wound to the chest. Witnesses presented by Conway and co-prosecutor Heidi Barshinger established that a red sedan was in the immediate area at the time of Fitzgerald's shooting and that Jordan had been seen in the past with an assault rifle.

Other testimony in the circumstantial case linked the shell casing to an assault weapon, although the gun used to kill Fitzgerald was never located.

Conway and Barshinger described Jordan to the jury as a dangerous man willing to carry out a brazen crime on someone in broad daylight. Minutes before the shooting, children were getting on buses to leave for school.

Henrico and Richmond police called attention to Fitzgerald's murder among a series of unsolved homicides last year in the Essex Village area off Laburnum Avenue near Richmond International Raceway.

In a rare joint news conference, police urged the public to help "clean out the rat's nest" of drug dealing and homicides in the area in announcing the arrests of 18 people on drug and other charges. Two of the homicides remain unsolved: that of 16-year-old Ricky M. Burton on Aug. 10 in Delmont Village; and of Ronnie A. Williams, 43, who was found dead near the intersection of Carolina and Pensacola avenues on Aug. 23.

Jordan is scheduled to be formally sentenced in January. In addition to a life sentence for firstdegree murder, the jury recommended a three-year sentence for use of a firearm and 10 years for shooting a weapon from a vehicle.

Conway and Barshinger praised the 25 witnesses, many of them residents of Essex Village, who were willing to testify in the case.

"It's not a stretch to say we couldn't have got this conviction without them," Conway said.

Contact Bill McKelway at (804) 649-6601 or .