Kilante D. Townsend, s/k/a Kilante Dasean Townsend v. Commonwealth of Virginia

Court of Appeals of Virginia·Decided March 4, 2025·No. 0573242·Unpublished

Opinion

COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA UNPUBLISHED

Present: Chief Judge Decker, Judge Chaney and Senior Judge Humphreys Argued at Richmond, Virginia

KILANTE D. TOWNSEND, SOMETIMES KNOWN AS KILANTE DASEAN TOWNSEND

MEMORANDUM OPINION* BY

v. Record No. 0573-24-2 CHIEF JUDGE MARLA GRAFF DECKER MARCH 4, 2025

COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA

FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY Donald C. Blessing, Judge

(John E. Robins, Jr.; Dan Miller & Associates PC, on briefs), for appellant. Appellant submitting on briefs.

Liam A. Curry, Assistant Attorney General (Jason S. Miyares, Attorney General, on brief), for appellee.

Kilante Dasean Townsend appeals his convictions for first-degree murder and two counts of larceny of a firearm in violation of Code §§ 18.2-32 and -95.1 He contends the trial court erred by refusing to strike a juror for cause. He also challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain his convictions. We hold the trial court did not err and affirm the convictions.

*

This opinion is not designated for publication. See Code § 17.1-413(A).

1

On the joint motion of the parties, the trial court set aside the jury’s guilty verdict for grand larceny of a motor vehicle based on a failure to prove value.

BACKGROUND2

I. The Killing

On December 22, 2019, Lloyd Johnson was scheduled to meet his nephew, Allen Newsome, at Newsome’s home. Johnson was seventy-five years old and took multiple prescription medications. He required monthly blood transfusions and “didn’t go [out] much.” A few weeks after each transfusion, he would begin to get weaker, and by the time the next one was due, he would “ha[ve]a hard time walking to and from [his] mailbox.” Johnson also had an enlarged heart and severe atherosclerosis, which reduced the amount of blood his heart was capable of pumping and contributed to his weakness. Newsome had last seen his uncle three days before they were scheduled to meet. Johnson was “weak” that day and was “due for [his next trans]fusion the following week.”

Newsome became concerned when Johnson, who was always punctual, did not arrive at the designated meeting time. He contacted Melvin Moore, another of Johnson’s nephews, and asked Moore to check on the elderly family member. Moore went to Johnson’s home and saw that his car, a Toyota Avalon, was missing from the driveway. Moore noticed that the sliding door to the basement was unlocked. In the basement under some carpets, he found Johnson’s dead body, and he saw dried blood on the floor. He immediately left the house and called 911.

Johnson customarily kept his house tidy and his daily medications organized. After the killing, however, Johnson’s house was completely ransacked and looked like “a tornado had gone

2 On appeal, “we review the evidence in the ‘light most favorable’ to the Commonwealth.”

Clanton v. Commonwealth, 53 Va. App. 561, 564 (2009) (en banc) (quoting Commonwealth v. Hudson, 265 Va. 505, 514 (2003)). That principle requires us to “discard the evidence of the accused in conflict with that of the Commonwealth, and regard as true all the credible evidence favorable to the Commonwealth and all fair inferences that may be drawn” from that evidence. Kelly v. Commonwealth, 41 Va. App. 250, 254 (2003) (en banc) (quoting Watkins v. Commonwealth, 26 Va. App. 335, 348 (1998)).

through.” The keys to Johnson’s car, as well as several other sets of keys, were missing from the hook in the kitchen where he kept them.

Johnson’s autopsy revealed that he had been “beaten severely” and “stabbed repeatedly.”

He died from multiple stab wounds. He sustained three stab wounds to his head and neck, twelve to his torso, and four to his upper extremities. The medical examiner noted that “[m]any of the[] wounds penetrated the chest and abdominal cavities, resulting in injury to the left jugular vein, heart, left lung, liver, spleen, duodenum, and retroperitoneal space.”

II. The Police Investigation At the time of the murder, Townsend lived with his grandmother in a residence next door to Johnson’s house. At about 10:30 p.m. the day before Johnson’s body was discovered, Virginia State Police Trooper Jonathan Campbell initiated a traffic stop of Johnson’s Toyota Avalon in Buckingham County. The Avalon initially came to a stop but accelerated away as the trooper approached it. During a police pursuit, the car veered off the road and crashed.3 Townsend was the driver and only occupant. The car landed on its side, “almost on its roof,” and numerous articles from the car were found “laying in the middle of the road.”

Just after the crash, Trooper Campbell conducted a pat down of Townsend. In his pants pocket, the trooper found a brown wallet containing Johnson’s driver’s license and a concealed- carry permit in Johnson’s name. In the roadway, the police found many pill bottles bearing Johnson’s name. Also on the ground outside the car, they recovered a Ruger EC9s 9mm pistol and a Taurus .357 Magnum revolver.

Down an embankment from the crash site was a bag containing an empty Clorox bottle, blood-stained paper towels, a black wallet containing another driver’s license issued to Johnson, and

3 Trooper Campbell last clocked the Avalon traveling at 122 miles per hour before it crashed.

a name tag also bearing his full name. The keys to the Toyota Avalon, as well as keys to Johnson’s truck and other sets of keys that he had kept in his home, were inside the crashed car.

Townsend was treated at the hospital for injuries sustained in the crash and then released.

He threw away the shoes and clothes he had been wearing at the time of the collision. After police developed Townsend as a suspect in Johnson’s murder, they retrieved the shoes and clothes from the trash at his grandmother’s home. Footprints and photographs of footprints collected near the sliding glass door to Johnson’s basement and in the vicinity of his body were consistent with impressions of the shoes Townsend was wearing at the time he crashed the Avalon. DNA testing proved that Johnson’s blood was on the bottom of Townsend’s shoes. Additionally, one of the blood-stained gloves Townsend was wearing at the time of the crash had Johnson’s DNA on it. Police also learned during their investigation that around Christmas of 2019, Townsend told Olivia Pelli, his girlfriend at the time, that he stole a car he was driving. And Townsend admitted to Pelli that he “killed someone.”

In Johnson’s house, after the murder, police found empty boxes for the Ruger and Taurus firearms recovered from the scene of the car crash.4 Although Johnson was known to keep his home neat, the boxes were lying on the floor in the middle of a hallway near the living room and kitchen, in what was clearly not “the ordinary place [for] them.” An empty box for a third handgun—another 9mm weapon—was found in the hallway, as well.5 Also lying on the floor were Johnson’s two long guns and a white plastic grocery bag. The grocery bag contained ammunition

4 The serial numbers on the firearms matched the serial numbers on the boxes. Inside one of the boxes, police also found a receipt in Johnson’s name for the purchase of a Ruger pistol bearing the same serial number.

5 The third handgun for which a box was located was not found in the house, in the car, or at the crash site.

boxes, “check boxes” bearing the name of a bank, numerous medication bottles, and two small jewelry boxes.

III. Conviction and Sentencing Based on this evidence, a jury convicted Townsend of first-degree murder and two counts of larceny of a firearm. He was sentenced to life in prison, with all but sixty years suspended, for murder and to twenty years in prison, with sixteen years suspended, for the larceny-of-a-firearm convictions.

ANALYSIS6

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Kilante D. Townsend, s/k/a Kilante Dasean Townsend v. Commonwealth of Virginia, (Va. Ct. App. 2025).

Kilante D. Townsend, s/k/a Kilante Dasean Townsend v. Commonwealth of Virginia (Kilante D. Townsend, s/k/a Kilante Dasean Townsend v. Commonwealth of Virginia) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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