Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 21, 1995 TAG: 9507210042
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Still wearing his pajamas, Farkas, 62, was shot three times in a gunbattle with Marlon DeTuncq, who broke into Farkas' Smith Mountain Lake house in the middle of the night. DeTuncq, 65, was shot and killed.
Farkas was flown to Roanoke Memorial Hospital, where he underwent surgery for torn intestines and had most of one leg amputated. He spent eight days in critical condition, heavily sedated and in and out of consciousness.
Wednesday at 8:45 p.m., he died.
"He's gone. It's a shame," said his friend and neighbor, Don Fairbanks. "I feel lucky to have known him the last six or eight months. We've had a good relationship, and it got snuffed out.
"There was a lot of stuff we could've still done together. I get teary-eyed talking about it."
Farkas, a psychologist who worked in New York state public schools for 30 years, retired to the lake in 1988. He was a gun collector and certified firearms instructor who participated in competitive target, skeet and trap shooting. At the lake, he fished and went boating.
He spent most of his spare time crafting wood furniture for himself and his two adult children - John, who lives in Long Island, N.Y., and Kimberly, who lives outside San Diego.
"My dad was a man of really high principles," his daughter said Thursday. "He spent his life helping children ... kids with problems ... he wanted to give them a fighting chance."
For the first couple of days after the shooting, she said, Farkas was conscious but was unable to speak because he was on a respirator.
"We tried not to talk to him about [the shooting], because he was having trouble with his blood pressure. We just told him we were so glad he was all right and we were proud of his bravery. I feel my dad felt triumphant in that he saved his life and Maralene's."
Farkas and Maralene DeTuncq had been dating off and on for about two months before she moved in with him, according to friends and family. He and the DeTuncqs lived about a mile apart in Beechwood West, a lakefront subdivision off Virginia 750.
Marlon DeTuncq's son Jordan said, "We are so sorry for [Farkas'] children. They are going through exactly what we're going through now."
"We've both lost our fathers now, and we're very sorry."
Maralene DeTuncq reported the shooting to authorities as a break-in by a stranger, because her husband was wearing a ski mask and she didn't recognize him, according to Farkas' daughter.
Bedford County Commonwealth's Attorney Randy Krantz said Thursday that he was still waiting for an autopsy report from the state medical examiner's office before he closed the case.
At a memorial service for Farkas, to be held tonight at Resurrection Catholic Church in Moneta, his daughter will read a poem by an unknown author that her father had hanging on his closet door.
Called "Anyway," the poem reads, in part:
"People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered. Love them anyway ...
"The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
"The biggest people with the biggest ideas can be shot down. ... But think big anyway.
"What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. But build anyway.
" ... Give the world the best you've got anyway."
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB