
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 15, 1993                   TAG: 9309150200
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MONTICELLO, FLA.                                LENGTH: Medium

TOURIST: `HE'S DYING!'

Margaret Ann Jagger, bleeding from a bullet that grazed her chest and right arm, cried into the telephone, "He's dying! He's really dying! . . . Please help!"

The British tourist's boyfriend had just been fatally wounded at an interstate highway rest stop in northern Florida, the latest in a series of attacks threatening the state's lucrative tourism industry.

Jagger, 35, and boyfriend Gary Colley, 34, who arrived Thursday in Orlando, pulled off Interstate 10 for a nap in their unmarked rental car early Tuesday. The rest area was well-lighted. There were other people around.

Then two armed youths approached, knocked on the windows and demanded money. "They woke up and tried to back out and that's when they were shot," said Jefferson County Sheriff Ken Fortune.

Jagger called 911 from a phone booth nearby.

"And there was blood all coming out of his mouth, and I think he's dying," she told the 911 operator.

Colley, who lived with Jagger for about 12 years, was the ninth foreign tourist in Florida to be killed since October.

Although police said it appeared that Colley's killers were unaware he and Jagger were foreign tourists, Gov. Lawton Chiles suspended all tourist advertising for Florida - at home and abroad.

The governor also ordered beefed-up patrols at the state's 48 interstate highway rest areas, deploying 540 auxiliary officers from the Florida Highway Patrol, Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission and Marine Patrol.

The state also was exploring ways to hire private security for a permanent 24-hour presence at the stops.

A car found abandoned in Monticello was identified late Tuesday as the assailants' car, said John Joyce, spokesman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Marks on the victims' car matched those on the stolen car; the cars bumped as the victims tried to escape, he said. A car found earlier near a Tallahassee high school wasn't related to the crime.

Chiles offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to arrests and convictions. He said he would ask President Clinton for a federal grant to expand Florida's violent-crime task force.

Colley, a truck driver, was shot in the neck. Jagger was grazed in the chest and arm, and was treated at a Tallahassee hospital and released.

Keywords:
FATALITY

by CNB