Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 20, 1990 TAG: 9006200501
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B2 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Charles W. Beck, 44, pleaded no contest in Roanoke Circuit Court to a charge of possessing a firearm after being convicted of a felony.
Judge Diane Strickland imposed a two-year sentence suspended after the time Beck has served in jail awaiting trial, about five months. Beck still faces a parole-violation hearing stemming from an eight-year sentence he received for abducting the nurses in 1986.
Beck testified Tuesday that he didn't intend to own a weapon when he was first paroled from prison in April of 1988.
He moved into an apartment on Bluff Avenue by himself, but soon became concerned when a resident knocked him out of his wheelchair for playing his television too loud, he said.
Beck said he decided to arm himself after the same person stabbed him in the stomach during a later argument. Beck's attorney, Public Defender Ray Leven, presented hospital records to document the injury.
"I was getting somewhat leery at that point," Beck testified.
Roanoke police were called to the apartment complex the afternoon of Jan. 7 after a resident reported an altercation with an armed man in the laundry room.
An investigation led police to Beck's apartment, where they found him seated in a wheelchair with a .357-caliber revolver in a shoulder holster under his jacket. Authorities found a shotgun propped behind a nearby door.
"He said over and over: `You can't take my guns; you can't steal my guns,' " Patrolman D.M. Dove testified.
Although Beck was not charged in the laundry-room incident, police arrested him on a firearms charge after confirming that he was a convicted felon.
Beck, who was paralyzed in an automobile accident in 1984, said the jail has not been able to adequately attend to his medical needs since he was arrested.
"It's almost intolerable," he said. "I just cannot believe that I'm being held in jail like this."
Beck was convicted in 1987 of taking two nurses hostage at gunpoint during a tense standoff at the VA hospital in September 1986. The incident ended peacefully after Beck's attorney talked him into surrendering to police.
Earlier testimony has shown that Beck suffers from psychological problems, alcohol abuse and post-traumatic stress syndrome brought on by his service in Vietnam.
Although Beck said Tuesday that the hostage-taking incident was not planned, he said he did it to call attention to what he claimed was mistreatment of elderly patients at the hospital.
"It was a spur of the moment type of situation," he said.
by CNB