ODU student handed 8-year term for armed robbery

NORFOLK

Justin A. Smith came to Old Dominion University to join the wrestling team and earn a college degree, his mother testified.

At some point, Brookye Smith said, her son made some very bad decisions.

Justin Smith was sentenced Friday to eight years in prison for one decision - the armed robbery of another ODU student at the victim's off-campus apartment in The District.

Circuit Court Judge Jerrauld C. Jones told Smith that he appeared intelligent and well-spoken and came from a supportive family. "If you didn't have on the jail jumpsuit and the handcuffs, you'd make a very impressive appearance," Jones told the defendant at sentencing. "I don't know what happened to you."

Smith, 21, pleaded guilty to felony counts of robbery, abduction and use of firearm in the commission of a felony. Three other former students also have pleaded guilty in the 2011 attack: Briana Gray, 20; and brothers Bradley A. Chapman, 20, and Brandon M. Chapman, 23.

Gray and Bradley Chapman each received six-year prison terms for their roles in the attack. Brandon Chapman is scheduled for sentencing in March.

Prosecutors gave an account of the crime in a stipulation of evidence filed with the court:

Around 8:15 p.m. on April 29, ODU student Marques Holmes got a call from Gray. She told him she thought she had left her ID card in his apartment, in the 1000 block of W. 39th St. She would swing by in a few minutes and get it, she said.

A short time later, Holmes answered a knock at the door, expecting to see Gray. Instead, Smith and Bradley Chapman confronted him. Bradley Chapman appeared to have a gun and Smith carried a knife, court records state. The men pushed into Holmes' apartment.

Smith held Holmes at knifepoint while Bradley Chapman searched the bedroom, court records state. The men took $400, a wallet, an iPod touch, a PlayStation 3 controller, a video game and a cellphone, according to the records.

Gray suggested the robbery to the men, because, prosecutors wrote, "she believed he would have large amounts of cash in his room." Gray also thought Holmes would have a gun, so the group found a toy pistol and disguised it to look real, court records state.

Smith stood in court and apologized to the victim and his family.

Defense attorney Christopher Zaleski said his client was captain of his high school wrestling team, wrestled in state championships, and still had incredible potential. "The behavior was an aberration," he said.

But prosecutor Sarah Rohn argued that Smith had been charged with another robbery near his parents' home in Leesburg, Va., before the Norfolk attack.

"He is the one who is throwing away his future," she told the court. "He voluntarily chose this path."

Louis Hansen, 757-446-2341, louis.hansen@pilotonline.com