• Trial of two Clarkton men charged with first-degree murder in the death of 19-year-old Chase Powell in 2002 to begin next week.

By BOB HIGH
Staff Writer

A long trial of two Clarkton men charged with the 2002 first-degree murder of Chase Powell begins Monday, Feb. 26, with selection of a jury from a large pool of residents summoned to the courthouse here.

The state has called 450 jurors to report to begin what is expected to be a slow and tedious process of seating a panel to hear the case that took more than three years for any arrest.

Tyrell “Nut” Burden, 26, and Ramel Theodore Troy, 24, are charged in the March 27, 2002 murder of the 19-year-old Chase Powell, a youngster living with his parents Robert and Rosemary Powell in the Welches Creek community northwest of Whiteville.

The victim was found three weeks after his disappearance. The last time he was seen in the Whiteville area was the night he was killed. The teenager gave Burden a ride to Clarkton after meeting him at the Time Saver convenience store at the intersection of U.S. 701 Bypass and Washington Street here.

Information in a court hearing showed the murder victim was headed to Elizabethtown to purchase a quarter-pound of marijuana.

Preliminary hearings in the case showed Burden, Troy and a third man – the late Marvin Joval “Pepe” Powell, 20 – didn’t have a weapon with them at the time they beat and robbed the victim of Ecstasy pills and cash just inside the Columbus County line south of Clarkton.

Records show Troy and Marvin Powell went to the home of Troy’s mother in Clarkton to get a pistol and returned to the scene. Investigators say Chase Powell begged for his life in the edge of a wooded area before being shot and killed.

Investigators believe it was Marvin Powell who fired the single pistol shot. Chase Powell’s body was found 21 days after his death. The youth’s decomposed body was against the root ball of a blown over oak tree about 100 feet from unpaved Baldwin Road.

Statements read at Burden’s probable-cause hearing showed Marvin Powell and Troy returned to the scene with a flashlight to look for the bullet casing, but were unable to find the small piece of metal.

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

Corey Michael Peterson, 28, from Frank Baldwin Road, Whiteville, is expected to testify against Burden and Troy. Peterson pleaded nearly a year ago in an armed robbery case and received a prison term that was suspended until he tells what he knows about the killing.

Peterson will not be charged as an accessory if he testifies truthfully about how he helped Troy and Burden dispose of Powell’s body. Peterson faces of prison term of 71 to 95 months for a Hallsboro robbery in 2005.

The prospective jurors are expected to be divided into groups that will be sent home until they are needed to be questioned.