News - Breaking News
Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2008
Teen charged in fatal Lamar shootingUPDATE: Boy to be held in Columbia, undergo examsBy ADAM BEAM -
abeam@thestate.comTaveio Boston loved his mother. He just didn’t want anyone else to.
Fourteen-year-old Taveio had lived with his mother, Sherryle Terry, but had trouble adjusting to his new home life once his mother remarried about three years ago, several family members said Tuesday.
His grades plummeted. He got into fights at school. He took his mother’s car, according to family members.
The car was the last straw, and Terry sent him to live with his father in Darlington, family members said. He visited his mother on weekends.
When Terry announced she was pregnant, Taveio didn’t like that either. He saw the child as competition for his mother’s affections, family members said.
“Love makes people do crazy things,” said Fred Alford, Terry’s nephew. “For him, it was ‘If I can’t have my mom to myself, then nobody else will.’ “
Sunday night, Taveio was at his mother’s home in Lamar. His stepfather, Casey Terry, was at work. He had argued with his mom during the day, according to the incident report.
Afterward, he talked to his 12-year-old sister, Cierra Alford — alone.
“If I shot Momma, would the baby die?” he asked, according to a statement the girl gave police.
It’s unclear whether she told anyone about her brother’s comments.
Later that night, Cierra was watching TV with her mom when she walked to the back of the mobile home to get some laundry. When she came back, she saw her brother standing in the dark doorway of the home.
She watched her brother shoot their mother in the chest, then turn and fire at her — spewing shell casings onto the living room floor, according to the statement.
Terry, 35, and her unborn daughter died. Taveio is charged with two counts of murder because the fetus could have survived outside the womb, prosecutors said. Terry was eight months pregnant.
The bullet went through Cierra’s arm and into her neck, family members said later. She fell to the floor and didn’t move.
Once again, Taveio climbed into the silver 1989 Nissan Maxima, his mother’s car, and drove off for Darlington.
BEGGING FOR HELP
In the house, Cierra got up and rushed out the door. She staggered through the darkness to the dirt road and crossed the street to the Berkheisers’ home.
Jennifer Berkheiser said she answered the door and saw Cierra — the nice girl who, just an hour earlier, was riding bicycles with her daughter — standing in a stream of blood.
She thought it was a Halloween joke.
But the blood was real, and Cierra begged for help as she lay on the Berkheiser’s kitchen floor.
EMS arrived. Then the police.
Taveio was gone. But 15 minutes later, Darlington County officials got a 911 call from Ralph Boston, Taveio’s father, Fourth Circuit Solicitor Jay Hodge said.
Efforts to reach Ralph Boston were not successful.
Ralph Boston said his son was with him and had just told him a horrific story of someone breaking into their house and shooting his mother and sister, Hodge said.
Boston was glad the boy had escaped, and called police.
NO SIGNS OF HATRED
Sherryle Terry met Casey Terry at the A.O. Smith plant in Hartsville, where they both worked making water heaters.
In Lamar, they lived in a mobile home off a forgotten road with a swing set and a trampoline in the backyard.
Taveio played with the neighborhood kids and told his sister he had a crush on their neighbor. He was on the junior varsity football team. His favorite foods are french fries and chicken wings.
“He was a little preppy kid,” Alford said.
After his mom remarried, things seemed to go well at first, family members said.
Taveio went on a trip to Arkansas with some of his stepfather’s family, where they took him shooting, said Nick Elmore, Casey Terry’s cousin.
If something was wrong at home, he didn’t show it, family members said.
“We didn’t see any signs of hatred. Nothing like that,” said Travis Russell, Sherryle Terry’s nephew. “It’s hard. It’s very hard.”
On Wednesday, a Darlington Family Court judge ordered the teen to be held in a juvenile facility in Columbia and to undergo several exams to help determine whether he should be tried as an adult as prosecutor Jay Hodge has requested.
In addition to the two murder charges, Taveio has been charged with assault and battery with intent to murder in the shooting of his sister, who suffered shoulder and arm wounds.
Hodge said he wants to charge him as an adult “because he acted like an adult.”
“To take the life of the one who gave you life is regarded as one of the most heinous crimes,” Hodge said.
INTENSIVE CARE
Tuesday afternoon, Cierra Alford was in the Intensive Care Unit at Carolina Pines Medical Center in Hartsville. She lay behind a sheet, sleeping to the whirring of her medical equipment.
Down the hall, Casey Terry, her stepfather, was sitting in a waiting room talking with a victim’s advocate with the sheriff’s department.
She asked him questions, but all Terry could do is stare straight ahead, softly wringing his hands.
http://www.thestate.com/breaking/story/570463.html
