DATE: Friday, November 21, 1997             TAG: 9711210657

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: MEBANE, N.C.                      LENGTH:   33 lines

VA. HIGH SCHOOL PRINCIPAL HELD IN TEACHER'S KILLING

A Virginia high school principal charged with killing a Fayetteville State University art instructor in North Carolina waived extradition Thursday.

Bowman Burton, 64, of Emporia, Va., was arrested late Wednesday and charged with first-degree murder in the death of Francis Bernard Baird, 54, an associate professor of art.

Gil Hudson, a lawyer who represented Burton at the extradition hearing, said his client expects to be exonerated. Burton had not yet been returned by deputies to Alamance County, N.C., Thursday evening.

Baird was found about 8:45 p.m Wednesday by Alamance County sheriff's deputies at the home of Gladys Gallop outside Mebane, Lt. Paul Fine said. He had been shot in the chest.

Baird was later pronounced dead at Alamance Regional Medical Center in Burlington.

Gallop apparently witnessed the shooting, sheriff's dispatcher Bobbie Hale said. Authorities immediately alerted other law officers to search for Burton.

Emporia police arrested Burton about 11:30 p.m. Wednesday in Emporia, about 120 miles northeast of Mebane, N.C., and about 65 miles south of Richmond.

Burton, the principal of Greensville County High School, was the principal of Woodlawn Middle School in Mebane in the mid-1980s, Fine said. Gallop was a teacher there.

Fine said Baird and Burton were friends of Gallop's, but he said he did not know what prompted the shooting. KEYWORDS: ARREST SHOOTING MURDER

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