ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, September 23, 1996 TAG: 9609230151
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
Hostage stand-off ends in woman's death; man held
VIRGINIA BEACH - Police thought they had the situation under control. They had been talking to the gunman on the phone off and on during the four-hour stand-off. He had let them speak with his ex-wife, whom he had tied up in a bedroom after allegedly killing her boyfriend.
But just minutes before Dana Driscoll surrendered early Saturday, police heard a single gunshot. Susan Driscoll, 39, mother of two and a school bus driver, was found dead inside her Virginia Beach town house. The body of her boyfriend, Walter D. Cartwright Jr., 49, lay on the sidewalk.
Dana Driscoll, 41, was being held without bail on two counts each of first degree murder and use of a gun while committing a felony, police said.
Police were alerted about 8 p.m. Friday, Thurston said, when Susan Driscoll called to report that a man had just been shot. She said she had fled to an upstairs bedroom and the gunman was coming.
Then the line went dead.
Police sealed off the area. SWAT team members took up positions in bushes and behind vehicles, keeping the house in their sights. It was past midnight when there was an apparent breakthrough: The gunman agreed to let the negotiators talk to Susan Driscoll.
They heard her voice and confirmed, for the first time, that she was alive. Hopes rose that the stand-off would end with her release. A moment later, the hopes crashed.
- Associated Press
Teachers may quit if student returns
FAIRFAX - A 17-year-old student has his teachers running scared. So scared that some of them are threatening to leave because the teen has been allowed to return to school despite making a death threat against a physics teacher last spring.
``Anyone who reads the paper knows these threats are very real,'' said Jim Elder, an Oakton High School biology teacher. ``No one wants to transfer, because it's a great school with great students. But when you look at something like this, you have to say, how far can you push this before we're forced to take some kind of action?''
The physics teacher, Steve Scholla, has taught in Fairfax County for seven years. He said he is negotiating to stay at Oakton on condition that the district tighten regulations to require expulsion of students who make threats against faculty members or to require the students to transfer permanently to another school.
A spokeswoman for the school system said officials are taking Scholla's requests for tighter regulations seriously, but they are standing by their decision to keep the student at Oakton. School officials said a decision is expected early this week.
The controversy started in the spring when a teacher reported the student to an on-campus police officer after overhearing the 17-year-old say of Scholla, ``He's a dead man.''
``The student stepped so far beyond the bounds of reasonable behavior, I just could not accept his apology,'' said Scholla, whose brother-in-law was shot and killed two years ago by an angry colleague.
- Associated Press
Traffic chase leads to drug bust
NORFOLK - A man fleeing a traffic checkpoint led police to an apartment stuffed with guns, cash and drugs that included more than $130,000 worth of heroin and cocaine, police say. Two Norfolk men were arrested.
The driver of the car, Bricelyn M. Russell, 26, already was wanted by Norfolk police. He faces multiple felony and misdemeanor drug charges, authorities said. A man who was in the apartment, Eric D. Morehead, 22, was held on a series of drug-related charges.
- Associated Press
Waste water could keep parks green
NEWPORT NEWS - Athletes at Riverview Farm Park can look forward to extra-green fields next year, thanks to a plan by the Hampton Roads Sanitation District to recycle waste water.
The district plans to add extra steps in treating some of the sewage at its James River plant in Menchville so Newport News can use it to irrigate the park's athletic fields. The plan, developed with Newport News Waterworks and the city Parks and Recreation Department, still must be approved by state regulators.
The sewage at the district's James River plant would not be clean enough to drink, but it wouldn't pose much health risk to people who come in contact with it, said Marcy Garnett, deputy field director for the Virginia Health Department.
- Associated Press
Newt made her active, Gingrich says
RICHMOND - The half sister of House Speaker Newt Gingrich said she became an activist for gay causes partly because of what she views as her brother's extremism.
``I'm not beating down his door,'' said Candace Gingrich, who heads the voter mobilization project of Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based gay and lesbian political group. ``I kind of get the hint. When there are things that concern me - when something is particularly frustrating to me - I'll fax him or try and call. Generally, there's no response.''
Gingrich, 30, was the keynote speaker Sunday for the 13th annual Greater Richmond Pride Festival organized by the Richmond Lesbian and Gay Pride Coalition.
``We are much more motivated and inspired to become active by the hate talk that we've heard in the past few months,'' she told about 3,000 people who attended the event in the city's Byrd Park.
``We're not going to run back into the closets,'' she said. ``We're going to go running toward the voting booths.''
- Associated Press
Monument remembers lost miners
CLINCHCO - Mining is a dirty and dangerous job, but now hundreds of miners who have died in coal mines will be remembered.
A Miners' Monument was dedicated Saturday in this small Dickenson County town, recalling more than 300 dead miners.
Roger Rose, chairman of the Dickenson County Board of Supervisors, said the miners who died in the mines went in understanding they were dangerous places, but did it to provide for their families.
``The main reason those people died is to do the best they could to provide and work for their families,'' Rose said.
- Associated Press
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