VIRGINIA BEACH
The haul was about $1,100 blood-stained dollars.
The price was two lives.
On Monday, 23-year-old Deandre Dunnaway and his girlfriend, 20-year-old Cheari Edwards, pleaded guilty to robbing the Rally’s drive-through on Lynnhaven Parkway where they worked, fatally shooting 27-year-old manager Alphonso White and his younger brother, 19-year-old Michael Johnson.
For Dunnaway, the plea spared him the death penalty but means he will serve the rest of his life in prison with no chance of parole. For Edwards, it means she may forfeit up to 47 years of her life at her sentencing Nov. 18.
The murders left a grieving family and four fatherless children. Family members said White had two girls and a boy, and Johnson had a daughter.
A fifth child also is affected: Edwards was pregnant at the time of the robbery and gave birth while incarcerated.
Court records and interviews with friends and family provided the following account of what happened Jan. 8:
Dunnaway and Edwards had worked at Rally’s a couple of months and befriended White and his fiancee, catching rides with them to work and staying over at their home to play cards.
Dunnaway had contemplated robbing the drive-through twice before, but finally decided to go through with the plot after his and Edwards’ shifts Jan. 7. He hid a gun in his pocket while he manned the grill that day. Edwards worked the cash register.
They clocked out at the end of the day, but never left, waiting until closing time – midnight – when they knew White would count up the day’s intake and place it in the restaurant’s safe.
That’s when Dunnaway confronted White, shooting him in the head where he sat, blood spattering some of the bills he was counting. Dunnaway then let Edwards inside, where she scooped the cash into a zip-close bag and stowed it in her purse.
White’s younger brother, Johnson, walked in and offered the duo the change in his pocket. Dunnaway shot Johnson in the head, leaving him lying on the kitchen floor.
A delivery driver arrived about 2 a.m. to find the drive-through’s lights blazing, loud rap music playing and the restaurant’s fryers, heaters and exhaust fans still buzzing. Inside was Johnson’s body, haloed in blood.
White was still in the office desk chair, change littered around his body.
A medic declared the brothers dead at the scene.
Blood-stained money taken from Dunnaway’s and Edwards’ Rivers Reach home contained DNA that matched White’s profile.
Under a plea agreement with the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, Dunnaway received the maximum sentence on all of his charges – two counts of capital murder, three counts of using a firearm and one count each of armed robbery and conspiracy – totaling two life sentences without parole, a third life sentence and an additional 23 years in prison.
Edwards pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder, three counts of using a firearm and one count each of armed robbery and conspiracy and, under her plea agreement, may receive up to 47 years and two months in prison. Without the deal, she faced life.
The victims’ families sat in the front row of the courtroom Monday, including White’s fiancee, Jessica Haynes, and their 9-month-old son, Alphonso Jr., who cooed and sucked on a pacifier as Judge Les Lilley reviewed the plea agreements.
Dunnaway, through an attorney, said he was sorry. A statement he’d written ahead of time proved too painful to read, the attorney said.
“It was the right thing to do to fess up to what you did,” Haynes said after Dunnaway and Edwards entered their pleas.
Haynes had also worked at Rally’s, but left the job. In White’s absence, she said her family is helping her raise their son.
“It’s hard,” Haynes said. “But I guess that’s the life of a single parent, something I wasn’t expecting. But the unexpected happens every day.”
Kathy Adams, 757-222-5155, kathy.adams@pilotonline.com