ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, December 2, 1996 TAG: 9612020077
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP AND JOHN GRIESSMAYER STAFF WRITERS
A Northwest Roanoke man was charged with murder Sunday after an early-morning stabbing at a Veterans of Foreign Wars lodge on Loudon Avenue.
Police first charged Michael Anthony Wells, 36, of the 3900 block of Virginia Avenue, with malicious wounding, but the charge was upgraded to murder after the victim died during surgery.
Police said they responded to a call to the VFW's Dunbar Post 1444, at Loudon and 20th Street Northwest, at 3:56 a.m. They found Anthony Roger Crutchfield, 49, suffering from a stab wound in the upper thigh.
He died shortly after 7 a.m. at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital.
Police said witnesses at the VFW said a man forced his way into the building and began arguing with Crutchfield in the bar area, then produced a knife and stabbed Crutchfield twice in the left thigh before being disarmed and chased away by a patron of the post.
Sunday afternoon, police were still investigating the altercation, but indicated it may have stemmed from a domestic dispute.
Witnesses said Wells previously had been barred from the building after several incidents of jealous behavior concerning a female patron, according to the police..
Police said Wells went to the Roanoke City magistrate's office shortly after the stabbing to obtain a warrant charging Crutchfield with assault. They said Wells then walked around the corner to the police station and admitted stabbing Crutchfield, but claimed he pulled his own knife in self-defense after Crutchfield started the fight.
Dallas Proax, the post quartermaster, said he was not there when the fight occurred. Proax said the bar is usually open from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. Saturday nights. Crutchfield, a driver of gasoline tanker trucks, lived in the 800 block of Hanover Avenue Northwest.
Crutchfield's killing was the city's ninth this year.
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