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Jury Pool Filled In Morva Trial |
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Written by WDBJ News
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Thursday, 20 September 2007 |
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A total of 24 potential jurors have been selected to fill the potential jury pool. Now prosecution and defense attorneys will each be able to remove five potential jurors. That will leave 12 jurors and two alternates to hear the case.
In the early morning hours of August 20, 2006, Montgomery County's hospital became a crime scene. Morva was being treated at the hospital when police say he beat a deputy, took his gun, and shot and killed security officer Derrick McFarland. Police began a massive ground search and spent the night stopping every car in the area. By daybreak, state police helicopters scanned the woods. But for more than 24 hours, there was no sign of Morva. Not until 7 a.m. on August 21st. That is when two Virginia Tech students spotted a man with a sheet over his head. He was walking on the Huckleberry Trail.
"Three minutes or so after we passed Morva, we ran into the sheriff. He asked if we had seen first Morva, then a guy walking in a blanket," says Brittney Hopkins. A minute after the deputy left them, gun shots rang out on the trail. A short time later, Corporal Eric Sutphin was dead.
The manhunt was then moved into downtown Blacksburg. Police with machine guns ran through the streets and crouched behind trees. It would soon spread onto the Virginia Tech campus.
There were false sightings of Morva on Tech's campus. After a gripping 37 hours in Blacksburg, the news people wanted to hear came during a press conference. Morva was found on the edge of the Tech campus in a briar patch, less than 200 feet from the second shooting. Photo courtesy of WDBJ.
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