Teen convicted of shooting, wounding two in Henrico

Two shooting victims pointed out Lawrence Davon Williams in a Henrico County courtroom yesterday as the person who opened fire on them a year ago.

The courtroom identifications were enough to bring convictions in a case where little other evidence emerged to explain why Williams, 16 at the time of the shootings, felt compelled to fire at Rashawn Tyler and Kyron Benjamin.

Tyler was shot in the hand, Benjamin beneath his right arm.

The two 18 year-olds were sitting in a car, they said, the evening of Sept. 30 last year when a hooded figure with a gun up his sleeve opened fire.

Before shooting, though, the assailant, known on the street as Fat Man, spit into both their faces, according to testimony.

Williams, who was tried as an adult, faces in excess of 40 years in prison when he is sentenced in January by Circuit Judge Burnett Miller III on two malicious wounding convictions and various firearms convictions.

The three eastern Henrico youths converged in the 300 block of Newbridge Road for unspecified reasons, one of a series of confrontations in the area late last year and early this year that erupted in gunfire.

In December last year another young man, Quintin Chambers, was fatally shot near Newbridge Road as he worked on a car; in February this year, two men from Louisa County who had come to Newbridge Road to sell a weapon were shot, one fatally, in a burst of gunfire from at least two weapons -- one an AK-47 assault rifle.

The February case resulted in a voluntary manslaughter conviction this month; two defendants in Chambers' death have not yet come to trial.

In April, also in the Newbridge Road area of eastern Henrico, a Chinese food delivery driver, Yong Sun, was shot to death in an apparent robbery attempt. No arrests have been made.

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