Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 25, 1994 TAG: 9408250115
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"He was just showing off," said "Little Rocky" Tasker, 12, who was in the room when Hearn shot himself with his mother's handgun. "He told me he was a professional."
Little Rocky's sister, Amanda, 10, who ran into the room after she heard the shot, said it seemed like a dream.
Hearn's mother, Donna, was in class at Virginia Western Community College at the time of the shooting. She believes her son was trying to impress a 14-year-old girl who was also in the room.
She said she can't help but feel responsible in some way. "I tell myself I should have done this and that ... but ... all you can do is teach them and hope for the best."
Little Rocky said he was there when Tommy Hearn got his mother's .357-caliber handgun from its storage place.
Donna Hearn said she keeps the gun locked and unloaded at all times, and the ammunition stored in a separate place.
But Little Rocky said Tommy knew where the key, the gun and the bullets were kept. He got them and put three bullets in the gun.
While Little Rocky and the 14-year-old, whose mother asked that her name not be used, watched TV, Tommy Hearn repeatedly drew back the hammer of the gun, pointed it at his head and pulled the trigger.
"He did it plenty of times," said Little Rocky. He said Hearn seemed to know how to make the cylinder skip a chamber so it wouldn't fire.
"He kept saying, 'You dare me to? You dare me to?''' the 14-year-old said. "I told him, `Stop playing around, put the gun up, you're scaring us.'''
After several clicks, the gun fired.
Amanda Tasker said she ran in the house when she heard the shot. She said she sat next to Tommy on the couch and held his hand.
Next door, Amanda's and Little Rocky's father, Rocky Tasker, thought the noise was just a car backfiring. Then Little Rocky burst into the room shouting, "Tommy shot himself, Tommy shot himself."
"I heard a horror in [my son's] voice," Nancy Tasker recalled Wednesday evening as a child from the neighborhood cried into her shoulder.
Rocky Tasker ran next door and found Tommy dead on the couch.
When he realized there was little he could do, he cleared everyone out of the house and called 911.
Donna Hearn was pulled out of class by Virginia Western campus police officers. She said they didn't tell her what was wrong, but when she saw how fast they were driving toward her home, she knew it must involve her children.
She said at first she resolved never to go back into the house, and stood across the street in a neighbor's yard most of the day.
Rocky Tasker said he is most concerned now about his children and the others in the neighborhood. He and his wife have arranged for a meeting with a counselor at the nearby Salvation Army facility to help the children come to terms with what happened to their friend.
As Donna Hearn waited for her son's body to be brought from her house, she said she heard on the police radio that someone with a gun was chasing someone else just a few blocks away on Tazewell Avenue.
"It just makes me think, 'What the hell's going on around here?''' she said.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB