Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 28, 1993 TAG: 9309280265
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RON BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The public rap sheet depicts him as a career burglar, driven by a lust for cocaine.
"He'll be just a statistic we lost," said Jim Crooke, a Franklin County investigator who knew him. "He wasn't a bad person. Because of his habit, he was desperate."
When he died Friday night from a shotgun blast, Pultz had broken into a Roanoke clothing store through a steel door, pushed aside a video game machine and threatened to kill the store's owner. The owner's wife fatally shot him.
"He was a very heavy drug user," Crooke said. "He stole to support his habit."
Authorities confirmed that Pultz had resumed using cocaine since his release from prison.
Crooke said Pultz mainly dealt in video equipment and guns, a hot commodity in the violent marketplace of streetside crack cocaine sales.
"He knew he could trade the guns for crack," Crooke said. "He knew he could get a lot of crack."
With that in mind, the 22-year-old had accumulated about a half-dozen burglary convictions in the past three years. After serving less than a year of an 8 1/2-year sentence, he was released from prison in July.
Since then, Pultz's day job was feeding fish and other animals in a pet store.
Crooke said Pultz knew he had a deadly habit.
"He admitted he had a problem," Crooke said. "He asked for help. Apparently, he got none."
Crooke asks a question that has perplexed many law enforcement official who routinely deal with crack cocaine.
"Putting him in prison wasn't the answer," Crooke said. "But where do we put them?"
by CNB