5 killings headed to county’s grand jury|[4/30/06]

Published 12:00 am Monday, May 1, 2006

Evidence in five killings will be presented to the Warren County grand jury that meets Monday.

Charges of capital murder will be presented in the shooting death of a Letitia Street man.

Dwight Albert, 31, 60 Eastover Drive, Apt. J1, and Larry Devon Hamblin, 27, 718 Main St., are charged with capital murder, and Kathryn Blue, 27, 1107 Stadium Drive, is charged with accessory after the fact to capital murder in the May 8, 2005, shooting death of Kennado Caples, who was 26 and lived at 1708 Letitia St.

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Caples’ slaying is one of five in which evidence is to be presented to grand jurors this week in Warren County Circuit Court.

Albert and Hamblin are in jail and Blue was released on bond because she is pregnant, District Attorney Gil Martin said.

Two of the four slayings occurred in 2005, and authorities have said each was a beating death with a baseball bat used as a weapon.

Benjamin Brooks, 31, 469 Union Ave., is accused of beating Derral Holmes, 25, 933 Bowmar Ave., in the head at T&S Tunnel Express car wash, 3530 Pemberton Square Blvd., on Oct. 19. Holmes died on Oct. 23 at University Medical Center in Jackson.

Brooks was released on $150,000 bond on Nov. 12.

And William Presley Brown, 32, 801 Clay St., Apt. 5F, is accused of killing Chenara Young, 43, 1303 Wood St., who was found dead of a blow to the head in a trash receptacle outside The Vicksburg Apartments, 801 Clay St., on Oct. 15.

Brown remains in the Warren County Jail, records show.

The other two slayings were of Annie and Egnation Davenport, who were both 52 and lived at 2618 Roosevelt Ave., on Dec. 29, 2001. Her son, Levi Bland, 37, who shared the home with them, is accused of two counts of murder in their deaths.

Bland was arrested the day after the slayings and has remained in custody since, mainly in the Warren County Jail. He has been examined in the Mississippi State Hospital at Whitfield, where staff declared him incompetent to stand trial, a March order from Judge Isadore Patrick of Warren County Circuit Court says.

In the same order Patrick wrote he found that Bland &#8220is not a danger to the communityā€¯ and set bail for him at $100,000. Patrick also directed in the order that the case be presented to the grand jury that begins Monday.

The charges were among about 89 to be presented to this week’s panel, Martin said.

Patrick is to preside over this week’s grand jury, which is scheduled to conclude its work Thursday afternoon.

The panel is the second of four scheduled to be convened this year in Warren County. The others are to begin July 24 and Oct. 30.