Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 22, 1993 TAG: 9305220089
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
The 58-year-old Lynchburg Foundry worker was unlucky enough to become the key player in two young men's plan to see what it would be like to shoot - and possibly kill - someone.
Sifford, a random target, was shot in the face with a 12-gauge shotgun as he drove down U.S. 11 near Fairlawn on his way to work at about 4:10 a.m. on Nov. 14.
Five days later, two Pulaski County men were charged with the shooting.
"I can't feel. All this is numb," Sifford testified Friday as he rubbed a hand over his face. "I could whistle, but I can't whistle now."
Sifford said his disability payments ran out this week.
"I don't have any income at all."
David Allen Lawson, 22, of Bob White Boulevard - who told authorities he drove the truck and another man with him shot Sifford - pleaded guilty Friday in Pulaski County Circuit Court to malicious wounding, shooting into an occupied vehicle and using a firearm while committing aggravated malicious wounding.
Lawson was found guilty, but Judge Dow Owens delayed sentencing him until a presentence report is returned by a probation officer.
He faces life in prison.
Commonwealth's Attorney Everett Shockley said Lawson and the other man charged in the case, Christopher Dane McGlothlin, were friends and had "talked to some extent about what it would be like to kill somebody."
On Nov. 14, Shockley said, the two went to the Dublin Hardee's and followed a car from the restaurant. They later returned to the Hardee's parking lot and decided to follow Sifford after he drove away from the drive-through window.
Lawson told Sheriff Ralph Dobbins, "without words being spoken, `this is the one they were going to pick out and shoot,'" Shockley told Owens.
As the truck Lawson was driving pulled along side Sifford's pickup, Sifford turned and looked and "there was a blast," Shockley said.
Sifford managed to continue driving until he reached McDonald's in Fairlawn and another motorist helped him, Shockley said.
Lawson "just turned it around in the median strip, headed back to Pulaski and went to bed."
Sifford testified that he has lost strength and mobility in his right arm because of plastic surgery to repair his lip and lower face. He undergoes physical therapy every day, but still is unable to drink from a cup without the liquid running down his face.
He also said he can no longer get his mouth open wide enough to eat hamburgers, a favorite food.
Lawson, who offered no defense evidence, averted his eyes while Sifford testified. His face appeared flushed and he did not watch as Shockley played a videotape of the sheriff interviewing Lawson.
In that interview, Lawson told the sheriff he and McGlothlin had been drinking the night before the shooting. The two didn't discuss what was going to happen as they sat outside the restaurant but "we knew what we was going to do . . . we was going to kill somebody."
Lawson said McGlothlin pointed the shotgun out the truck window and fired it at Sifford.
McGlothlin, 18, of Bertha Street, was scheduled to be tried last week, but the case has been continued to the September term of court.
"I hate it," Lawson told Dobbins in the videotaped interview. "I hate it ever happened. Don't know why it happened."
by CNB