“Can I say he was definitely 100 percent part of the Bloods, no I cannot say that.” Those are the words of U.S. Marshal David Thomas in reference to Ryan Martez Turner, an 18-year-old Charlottesville man who was wanted on one count of capital murder and was apprehended by marshals in Wilmington, Delaware, on Friday, May 4. Turner had been on the lam for a couple of months, following the shooting death of 23-year-old Clarence Maurice Austin. According to published reports, Austin was killed in Buckingham County, where his body was dumped by three men, one of whom, it is charged, was Turner.
On May 8, The Daily Progress quoted Buckingham law enforcement authorities as denying that the shooting, which they think was strictly drug-related, is tied up with gang activity.
But Marshal Thomas told C-VILLE that the gang question is possibly more open-ended than that. The area where Turner was captured, Delamore Street, “was known for some gang activity,” Thomas said. “I know the sherriff in Buckingham says there’s no gang activity, but, now, we did receive information that [Turner] might be involved in a gang.
“But use it loosely,” Thomas advises. “Gangs on the East Coast are not as prevalent as the West Coast.”
Turner is being held in Piedmont Regional Jail in Farmville, where the other two suspects in the homicide, Theodore Calvin Timerlake of Charlottesville and Claude Lorenzo Booker of Palmyra, are also being held without bond.
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