Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 21, 1994 TAG: 9409230075
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER NOTE: below
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"I said, 'Gary, you gotta stay away from those people down there,'" Fred Thomas recalled Tuesday.
"Down there" is Roanoke, a city feared for its drugs and vice by many rural people on its outskirts, people like West's friends and kin in his native Floyd County. What happened to West makes them all the more wary.
Sunday morning, the 34-year-old former dairy worker, enraged over troubles with his former girlfriend and clutching a shotgun, was the center of one of Roanoke's most public armed standoffs in years.
He held his girlfriend and another woman hostage in a car, then let them go. For two hours just before dawn on Roanoke's Williamson Road, West rambled and raved, often incoherently, as spectators watched and police tried to talk the gun out of his hands.
Finally, he pointed it at one of them. Police pumped nine bullets into him as he stood with his back against a wall. He was pronounced dead on the patch of grass where he fell.
Friends of people who die in such a violent way often express surprise in the interviews that follow. In West's case, they just can't believe it. "That was just not Gary," said one woman in Floyd.
They say he was a naive country man with a speech impediment, a fat wallet and a hunger for attention - easy prey for the fast Roanoke crowd he fell in with last winter.
Friends say they do not know if he was using drugs. Toxicology reports from his autopsy are due back from the lab in a few days.
Roanoke police say his former girlfriend gave her name at the scene Sunday as Lisa Loflin, but city detectives believe she is also known as Lisa Mullins. Loflin told police Sunday that West had been stalking her for a week.
"I can't say that Lisa Loflin and Lisa Mullins are one and the same, but I have detectives who say that," said Roanoke Police Maj. J.L. Viar. He said West recently filed a police complaint accusing Loflin of unauthorized use of his pickup truck.
Court records show that a Lisa Lynnette Mullins, who often gave a Floyd address, is a convicted prostitute with indecent exposure and alleged grand larceny on her record. She also gave several addresses in Old Southwest Roanoke and twice was found guilty of using assumed names.
One Floyd County acquaintance of West's, who asked not to be quoted by name, said West often had a young woman with him this year. "She was real flirty, just leading him around by the nose," said the man. "Whenever she was around, he was just like a puppy dog on a leash."
The man said West bought the woman a Camaro but, uncharacteristically, never made payments on it. His friends and family said West usually insisted on paying his bills on time, often tracking down his creditors to do so in person.
Bobby Boyd, who rented a trailer to West for years at Falling Branch Trailer Park near Floyd, said he never gave him a minute's trouble. "None whatsoever," said Boyd. "There just wasn't a better person around nowhere. The boy lived up there all the years we owned the park and was never in any trouble until all this started, and he did a complete 360."
Boyd said West's life began to unravel last winter. West told him once that he was in love with a woman, "that he couldn't stay away from her."
This spring, West lost his job of 15 years at Valley Rich Dairy in Roanoke. His co-workers said he was a faithful employee until his last months there, when he was too sleepy and spaced-out to do his work.
A man who worked with him for 12 years said of West, in those early years: "He never missed a day for nothing. He had a whole lot of money saved. Heck, sometimes he'd have five or six [uncashed] paychecks in his pocket." He said men at Valley Rich often borrowed money from West.
The man, unable to drive because of eye problems, said West drove him to work for two years. In return, the man treated West to breakfast at Hardee's.
Six days before his death, West, in a red baseball cap, came to see the man and his wife at their home in Salem. He sat down with them for a dinner of chicken, cornbread and green beans fresh from their garden.
He had told them earlier that some women had damaged his truck. "He said they took his truck and tore it up."
Most surprising to the man, West borrowed $20 from him.
"I don't know what happened to Gary, I'll tell you."
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB