Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 12, 1993 TAG: 9305120084
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RON BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
And investigators are looking into the possibility that alcohol may have played a part in Eric Scott Lee's fatal confrontation with police.
Authorities found a wastebasket full of beer cans in the 9th Street Southeast apartment of Kim Gunter, Lee's girlfriend.
Police are awaiting a toxicology test to determine whether he had been drinking at the time of his death. That report will take at least 30 days to complete, Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell said Tuesday.
Gunter and another woman, Rhonda Caldwell, were inside the apartment when Lee got into a scuffle with officers S.F. O'Neill, J.M. Donaldson and R.L. Hague.
Rhonda Caldwell had called police to the apartment around 6:45 a.m. Monday.
"I just had a man punch me in the mouth and bust my lip open and he's got another girl trapped in the house who is only 20 years old," Caldwell told 911 dispatchers.
"Please send them right around; he's trapped in the house with her," she continued, according to a tape of the conversation.
She identified Lee as Eric "Something-or-other."
"He woke us up out of the middle of the night because . . . we were all three sleeping in the bed and he couldn't get nothing off of neither one of us and he just started going off," Caldwell told dispatchers.
Authorities said Lee died from asphyxiation after being grabbed around the neck by Donaldson. Police say Lee had to be subdued after he started choking O'Neill.
Police are expected to finish their investigation either late this week or next week. Caldwell will review the report and determine whether police acted properly.
O'Neill, Donaldson and Hague have been assigned to administrative duties while Lee's death is investigated.
Donald Caldwell, the commonwealth's attorney, said Gunter on two occasions since last summer obtained assault warrants against Lee, who worked as a cook at a Williamson Road restaurant.
She also tried to get a restraining order to keep Lee away from her, Caldwell said.
Lee also had obtained an assault warrant against Gunter, but that charge was dropped.
Court records show that Lee was arrested last month for being drunk in public. But Donald Caldwell said Lee, 20, had no significant criminal record as an adult.
That is consistent with an image of Lee drawn by acquaintances interviewed Tuesday.
"I didn't find him violent," said Harry Russell, Lee's boss. "He seemed to be a smooth-going guy to me. He was a hard worker."
Shirlene Hogan, 19, Lee's former girlfriend, said he was the type to walk away from an argument.
"I've always been the type to argue," she said. "He never would hit me back."
Now, Hogan said she must one day explain to her 9-month-old son how his father died.
"Couldn't three of them get him down without killing him?" she asks. "I will find out for my son. I'm not going to tell him his father was a violent man, that's the reason the cop killed him."
Staff writer Laurence Hammack contributed to this story.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB