Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 7, 1991 TAG: 9102070149
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON/ NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: FLOYD LENGTH: Medium
Eula Hale Sowers, who witnessed the fight between her son, 32, and husband that left her husband dead, said the head injury to her son had "changed his mind."
Before the injury - the time or circumstances of which she did not explain - her son was well-behaved and got along well with family members. But afterwards, he became abusive toward his family, she said.
On several occasions, she said they had to handcuff him and admit him to St. Albans Psychiatric Hospital. Once, he slashed her arm with a knife, she said.
In July, she and her husband, Harold Lee Sowers, 60, came home to the house they had been repairing in the Pilot section of the county after seeing another son in Christiansburg. Donald Ray Sowers had been at home all day, she said.
It was after dark and she began making dinner, while her husband said he was going to ask their son if he had taken his medicine, which he often forgot to take.
She said the next sound she heard was a loud thud from her son slamming his father against the dining room wall. When she ran into the dining room, she said her son had her husband pinned on the floor and was choking him.
She said she tried to break up the fight by pulling her son's hair and hitting him on the back and on the head with a small metal step ladder, but nothing worked. She called the sheriff's department.
She saw blood coming from her husband's ears and her son looked up at her and said, "He's dying and you're next. But it didn't sound like him, or even look like him," she said. "It just wasn't his voice."
She said she then fled the house. She was taken later to Montgomery Regional Hospital and treated for a minor back injury suffered while trying to break up the fight.
Floyd County Deputy Steve Graham testified Wednesday that when he arrived at the house, the senior Sowers was dead on the dining room floor and Donald Ray Sowers was on the living room sofa with his head in his hands.
Graham said Sowers' pants and skinned hands had blood on them. He said Sowers made no statements to police.
Sowers has been undergoing psychiatric evaluation at Central State Hospital in Petersburg, where he was returned following Wednesday's hearing in Floyd's Juvenile & Domestic Relations Court.
After hearing Wednesday's testimony, Judge J.L. Thompkins III certified the murder charges against Sowers to the Circuit Court grand jury, which next meets March 1.
by CNB