Convicted killer guilty of child abuse

July 11--A woman already in prison for killing someone has now also been convicted of child abuse charges related to a 2008 wreck that killed her 9-year-old son.

Lisa Church Damron, 39, was riding in a van on Morris Creek Road in Dudley Shoals with her husband, Jerry Wayne Damron, 50, and six children between 1:30 and 2 p.m. on Sept. 26, 2008, when the van swerved off the road smashed into a tree, Trooper T.C. Williams of the N.C. Highway Patrol said in court. When Williams arrived, emergency workers were working to cut open the van to remove several of the children, several of whom were critically injured.

"They were all pretty young. The oldest one was I think 9 years old," Williams said.

The oldest child, Hauston Damron, was thrown from the van in the wreck and killed.

Williams recalled that there were a couple of child booster seats in the wreckage, but he could not remember if there were as many as there were children. He thinks that Hauston Damron was in a booster seat, but it was not properly fastened in the van.

The driver, Jerry Damron, seemed "very unsteady on his feet, kind of dazed and confused," Williams said. "His speech was slurred. ... Didn't really understand what happened."

During a test to check Damron's balance at the Caldwell County Jail, Damron swayed, Williams said, and when asked to stand on one leg, he kept dropping his other foot to the floor.

Assistant District Attorney Nancy Lee said Lisa Damron should have known that her husband was impaired, and she not only allowed her children to travel in the car with an impaired driver, she also failed to fasten all of the children into car seats.

"She had a parental duty to those children," Lee said.

Lisa Damron testified that all of the children were in car seats, and that she had not seen her husband consume any sort of impairing substance that day.

Damron's attorney, Kenneth B. Darty, said that there was no evidence that indicated Lisa Damron ever knew her husband was under the influence of an impairing substance. "I am really unclear on exactly what the state is contending is misdemeanor child abuse. This is the first I ever knew that the state was contending this has something to do with seatbelts," Darty said.

Damron was convicted on six counts of misdemeanor child abuse. Judge David W. Aycock of Caldwell District Court sentenced her to 45 days in prison for each count, but those sentences may be served at the same time. Darty appealed Aycock's decision.

The Damrons' five surviving children, all under 8 years old at the time, were placed in foster care.

These charges took so long to come to court because of something that happened 10 months after the Morris Creek Road wreck, on July 9, 2009, when Lisa and Jerry Damron were stopped on Interstate 77 in Wythe County, Virginia, for speeding. Lisa Damron, then 31, was driving and smelled of alcohol. As the deputy spoke to her, Jerry Damron kept getting out of the van despite the officer's pleas for him to remain inside the van.

Inside the van investigators found a dead body wrapped in a bloody blanket. An autopsy revealed that Kelly Lynette Culley, 42, of Taylorsville had been shot six times with a .22-caliber handgun.

On Feb. 16, 2011, Jerry Damron pleaded guilty in Alexander Superior Court to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison. Lisa Damron pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 12 to 24 years in prison.

In January 2013, Jerry Damron pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and reckless driving to endanger in the Morris Creek Road wreck, reduced from charges of felony death by vehicle, driving while impaired and reckless driving.

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