Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 19, 1994 TAG: 9409220024
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER and KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Police had not officially released information as of 9 p.m., but witnesses said that Christiansburg Officer Terry Griffith, who had responded to an early-evening shoplifting report at Hills on Roanoke Street, was shot once in the head after struggling with the suspect outside the store.
The name of the suspect was being withheld.
Griffith was being treated in the emergency room at Roanoke Memorial Hospital, after being airlifted by LifeGuard-10. No further details on his condition were available.
Details were sketchy, but according to police and witnesses, the suspect wrestled with Griffith, took his gun and shot him. A bullet also grazed the cheek of Sgt. Bill Wiatt, a Montgomery County sheriff's deputy, and the suspect then stole his car.
The suspect drove onto Roanoke Street, turned onto Depot Street, then wrecked the deputy's car in front of the Christiansburg Livestock Market, witnesses said. He then jumped into a small car and fled again.
The suspect eventually turned off Main Street onto Phlegar Street near Burger King, and drove off the road into a hedge. Deputies surrounded the car and ordered him out.
The man, according to police, emerged from the car with a gun and ran across the street to another deputy's vehicle and jumped in the driver's side. When he didn't get out, officers opened fire on the car, killing him.
As dusk approached, hundreds of onlookers gathered in the Burger King parking lot; others looked down from the roof of Domino's Pizza or watched from a church across the street. About the cordoned-off scene, 19 cups with rocks atop them marked the places on the ground where shell casings fell.
It was not known what caused an apparently minor attempt at theft to turn into a bloody gunbattle.
Betty Spangler, the store detective at Hills, said she watched a man take a carton of cigarettes and slip them into his pants, then try to walk out the front door.
Spangler, 58, of Shawsville, said she whispered to a cashier to "get me some help," then followed the man toward the front of the store.
The man then suddenly grabbed her by the arm - "I hadn't said anything to him," Spangler said - and tossed the cigarettes aside. She struggled with him, got him by the shirt and pulled it off, and escaped from him as he ran.
Spangler and Hills operations manager Ronald Strauss said the man ran outside and jumped into a gray van. Spangler tried to keep him in the van, but he managed to push the passenger door open, and when he got out he had a can of mace.
She and Strauss backed off, and the man ran across the parking lot toward Roanoke Street.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB