Connection between Roanoke officer beating and Roanoke murder case

By Lindsey Henley
WSLS10 Reporter
Published: May 14, 2008

Dantonio Foster is in jail, but tells 10 On Your Side he watched his best friend, James Stokes, die on a sidewalk in front of a local apartment complex Saturday afternoon.
“The closer I got he was holding onto the fence.  When he finally hit the dirt I was right there over top of him,” Foster said.
A search warrant claims Stokes was in a “heated argument” with a man named Kente Gilkes minutes before the shooting. 
Foster claims he saw Gilkes shoot his friend, so when Foster ran into Gilkes’ mother, Mary Gilkes, at a Roanoke Go-Mart later that night, he confronted her.
“I approached her and I said, ‘Miss Mary I don’t want to disrespect you by asking you this question, but I have to.’ I asked her did her son kill my brother?  She went on about how they were arguing and she put herself in front of my brother.  Then she just stopped explaining to me and said, ‘Yeah he killed him, so what, the ******* deserved to die.’”
“When she said that, I don’t know, I was just filled up with rage, and I grabbed her by her throat.”
When Foster let go, he took off down the street.
Not long afterward, Officer Bryan Lawrence spotted the two suspects on Hillcrest Avenue.
“I automatically put my hands up even though he was in an unmarked car, I knew who he was.”
“I went to step off the curve, and the police officer came towards me, so I ran a little bit, but I tripped.  When I tripped, he got on my back and told me to put my hands behind my back.”
That’s when Foster says William Steele Junior kicked Officer Lawrence in the neck.
“I heard the police officer let out a loud scream.  I didn’t know what was going on, because I’m actually getting apprehended at the time.”
“As far as the police officer goes, I feel sorry for him and his family right now, and I wish [Steele] would have never did what he did.”
Foster is charged with obstruction of justice and malicious wounding of Mary Gilkes.
Steele is also charged with obstruction of justice and malicious wounding of a police officer.