• 400 jurors summoned to try Ramel Troy of Clarkton in the killing five years ago of 19-year-old Chase Powell of the Welches Creek community.

By BOB HIGH
Staff Writer

An anticipated long trial of the first of two men charged with murder in the 2002 drug-related death and robbery of a 19-year-old Welches Creek youth opens here Monday.
The state has called 400 jurors to begin what is expected to be a slow process of seating a panel to hear the state present evidence against Ramel Theodore Troy of Clarkton in the case in which it took three years to make arrests.

The 24-year-old Troy is charged as one of the two primary defendants in the March 27, 2002 pistol slaying of Chase Powell, a youngster living with his parents Robert and Rosemary Powell.

Powell’s body was found in the edge of a wooded area in northern Columbus County three weeks after he was killed. The victim was last seen here on the evening of the date of his death when he gave a second Clarkton man – Tyrell “Nut” Burden, 26, a ride to the Bladen County community at the county line.

Troy’s trial was postponed in February to allow the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) to examine again fingerprints purported to contain those of the defendant.

The first SBI analyst to examine the fingerprints retired, and a second analyst said additional time and new inked impressions were needed to reach a definite conclusion.

Powell was headed to Elizabethtown to purchase a quarter-pound of marijuana the night he was killed. Investigators believe a third man – the late Marvin “Pepe” Powell, 20 – was the person who actually pulled the trigger on the weapon that killed the Columbus County youth.

Troy and Burden are charged with being present and participating in robbery of Ecstasy pills and cash from the victim that took place, plus the murder.

Records show Burden, Troy and Marvin Powell didn’t have a weapon with them when the beating and robbery took place, and Marvin Powell and Troy went to the home of Troy’s mother and got the pistol used in the shooting.

Chase Powell’s body was found 21 days later, against the root ball of an oak tree that had been blown down about 100 feet from unpaved Baldwin Road.

Statements presented at probable-cause hearings show Marvin Powell and Troy returned to the murder scene with a flashlight to search for the bullet casing, but were unable to find the small piece of metal.

Columbus County sheriff’s detectives found a 9mm casing in the fall of 2003 about three feet from where Powell’s body was discovered. The casing was covered with leaves and dirt that many rains had washed from the oak tree’s exposed roots.

Corey Michael Peterson, 28, of Frank Baldwin Road, Whiteville, is scheduled to be a witness for the state. He pleaded in 2006 to armed robbery and received a prison term that was suspended until he testifies truthfully about what he knows.

An agreement with the state shows Peterson will not be prosecuted as an accessory after the fact of murder if he tells on the stand what he told detectives. Peterson helped Troy and Burden at the scene after the murder, records show.

Peterson received a prison term of 71 to 95 months for an armed robbery in Hallsboro in 2005.