NORFOLK, Va. (WRIC) — Four Greensboro, North Carolina men are facing mandatory life sentences after being convicted of conspiring to kill a 59-year-old Norfolk woman in 2016.
According to court records and evidence shown at trial, 38-year-olds Jaquate Simson and Landis Jackson were the leaders of a criminal organization that distributed hundreds of kilograms of cocaine in North Carolina and the Hampton Roads region of Virginia.
In April of 2016, court documents state a Norfolk drug dealer did not pay for a delivery of cocaine worth over $81,000, causing Simpson and Jackson to retaliate by hiring Nine Trey gang member Kalub Shipman to kill the next person to exit a house on Trice Terrace in an area the dealer was known to frequent.
Hours after being hired, Shipman and a fellow gang member traveled to Norfolk to conduct surveillance on the house before returning to Greensboro. Shipman then recruited 32-year-old Nelson Evans to help with the murder, offering some of the $10,000 he was being paid, and the pair went to Norfolk on April 18, 2016.
At around 11:30 the next morning, Shipman and Evans went to Trice Terrace and shot 59-year-old Lillian Bond as she took out the trash. Bond had been an employee at the Children’s Hospital for King’s Daughters in Norfolk for about 20 years.
All four defendants are facing mandatory life sentences after they were found guilty of the following charges:
“This day has been a long time coming, especially for the family of Lillian Bond. This drug enterprise took the life of an innocent person, a woman well known to be kind and compassionate to her friends and family, and I hope that today’s verdict brings some measure of justice to her family,” said Jessica D. Aber, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. “We are committed to continuing to work with our federal and state law enforcement partners to reduce the amount of drug-related violence in our communities.”
