A Norfolk home invasion and rape case has resulted in three defendants being sentenced to a combined 186 years behind bars.
During the attack that began in Virginia ӽ紫ý and ended in Norfolk, prosecutors say, one of the 18-year-old assailants forced a man to watch his own mother being raped at gunpoint.
Then the other teen, also 18, raped the woman in a different bedroom, followed by the first assailant coming in and sexually assaulting her a second time.
The teens then put the mother into a dog cage and fled.
“These were not crimes of impulse,” said Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney Ramin Fatehi. “They were crimes of premeditation that shock the conscience.”
The stiff sentences, he said, “took into consideration the harm and trauma” the men had inflicted.
The attack occurred on Oct. 2, 2021, when Deandre L. Ward and Dameron S. Wright of Norfolk — both then 18 — approached two men outside a Virginia ӽ紫ý apartment, according to a release from the Norfolk prosecutor’s office this week.
The assailants flashed handguns and forced the victims, both also 18, back into their own apartment, then rifled through their belongings, helping themselves to what they wanted.
Zyrail Mitchell, 19, who knew the victims and helped to set up the crime, hid nearby “to avoid recognition.” Mitchell texted with Ward and Wright while they were in the apartment, putting the stolen items in his car.
But one of the victims heard Mitchell speaking while the robbery was underway and “recognized his voice.” That would become a key break in the case later.
Ward and Wright then forced the victims to drive them to Norfolk, to the home of one of the victim’s mothers.
When the mother, who was in her early 40s, answered her door on Thompson Road in Norfolk, the armed teens went inside and “ordered everyone to get on the ground and demanded thousands of dollars from the mother,” the prosecutor’s office said.
Though she gave them $800 in cash, they wanted more. They forced the three victims into a bedroom and tied their hands, with Ward staying in the bedroom and Wright going around and searching the home.
That’s when the first sexual assault took place, with Ward taunting the woman’s son as he raped her at gunpoint.
When Wright came back to the bedroom, he and Ward jointly “ransacked” the room looking for cash.
Wright then ordered the mother into a different bedroom and sexually assaulted her before Ward raped her again.
The men then “forced her into a large dog cage inside the room before leaving the residence in Mr. Mitchell’s car.”
Ward and Wright were arrested several days after the attack. Mitchell was arrested a couple months later.
As part of the investigation, Mitchell’s cell phone records were traced to the victims’ Virginia ӽ紫ý apartment at the time the robbery. Biological material found on the bed linens in Norfolk were a DNA match to Ward and Wright.
In September 2023, Wright pleaded guilty to rape, forcible sodomy, abduction with intent to defile, armed robbery, robbery conspiracy and three firearms charges. Ward pleaded guilty to the same charges, plus additional rape and forcible sodomy charges.
In September 2024, Norfolk Circuit Court Judge Tasha Scott sentenced Wright, now 22, to 73 years in prison. And on May 9, she sentenced Ward, also 22, to 97 years behind bars.
Ward got another 10 years to serve in Virginia ӽ紫ý in the armed robbery in that city, while Wright faces a trial there on June 30 with multiple pending charges.
Mitchell, now 23, pleaded not guilty, but Judge Mary Jane Hall found him guilty at a March 2023 trial on robbery, armed burglary and three abduction counts, five conspiracy charges and five gun counts. Hall sentenced him to 16 years.
Peter Dujardin, 757-897-2062, pdujardin@dailypress.com
