This Week Year in Crime: Crime and (Eventual) Punishment

As we experience a brief lull in Reston's scary MASSIVE CRIME WAVE, we get to revisit a couple of blasts from the past, courtesy of the ever-speedy judicial system.

First, the upstanding youth who helped ring in the New Year in South Reston finally had their day in court. And we finally get to hear a rich, textured tale of star-crossed lovers, mistaken identities... and gangs.

The 19-year-old victim and 19-year-old defendant came from contrasting backgrounds and didn’t know each other, but they will be forever linked by last New Year’s Eve.

Oooh, dramatic! Unfortunately, we already know what happens next.

[The victim] was stabbed five times by a Ghost Town Crips gang member from Reston whom he didn’t even know.

"I think about it all the time. How can I forget what happened to me that night?" he testified at a sentencing hearing Friday, Sept. 26 in Fairfax County Circuit Court.

The case was only the second Casey M. Lingan could recall prosecuting where gang activity victimized someone with no connection to gangs.

"The Commonwealth has a victim who is completely and wholly innocent, essentially because someone was jealous over a girl," said Lingan, deputy commonwealth’s attorney.

And that's where the story just gets weird. But it has a little something for everyone -- romance! Action! Guys hanging on accelerating cars!

[The victim] AND HIS FRIEND attended a New Year’s Eve party in Loudoun County with a female friend. The female had previously dated the victim's friend and was currently dating a juvenile friend of the defendant.

"The defendant wasn’t even the jealous one," said Lingan.

At some point during the party, the girl asked the victim’s friend to drive her to a house in Reston near the 12200 block of Scotch Bonnet Court to meet her boyfriend.

As soon as the vehicle pulled into the cul-de-sac, a group of 15 individuals surrounded the car.

"I got hit five times in my face, I didn’t know I had been stabbed," the victim testified Friday.

"If it wasn’t for my friend pulling off, who knows what would have happened," he testified.

Meanwhile, another upstanding resident had his day in court stemming from a September 2007 attempted murder of a police officer on Sunrise Valley Drive in Herndon.

The 27-year-old man was sentenced Friday, Sept. 26 to 51 years in prison for the attempted capital murder of Fairfax County Police Officer Eugene Bork.