Motel slaying suspect ordered held

A Hesperia teenager was ordered held over for trial Thursday in the deadly shooting of 49-year-old Virgil Fleming during a robbery at a Foothill Boulevard motel last September.
Judge Brian McCarville determined there was sufficient evidence to hold 18-year-old Terrell Travon Austin to face charges of murder and attempted first-degree residential robbery during proceedings held in San Bernardino Superior Court.
Austin also faces allegations of personally using a firearm during the commission of the crime.
Austin is scheduled to return to court Sept. 3 for formal arraignment on the charges.
Prosecutors say Austin, the suspected gunman, and co-defendant Camille Patterson, 17, tried to rob Fleming at the San Bernardino Motel when the shots were fired.
"They were there to rob him because he seemed to have a lot of money on him," said Deputy District Attorney Beth Houser, in a telephone interview. "In the course of attempting to rob him, he was shot and killed."
Authorities found Fleming's body in the street outside the motel.
Patterson testified at the hearing as a condition of a plea bargain she struck with prosecutors Apr. 11, when she pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter with an allegation that a principle was armed with a firearm.
Patterson faces between three to six years in state prison, based on her truthful testimony at all court proceedings, when she is later sentenced.
Austin was arrested in April by the FBI Inland Regional Aprehension Team at a house in the 12000 block of Clovis Court, in Hesperia.