ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 1, 1997 TAG: 9701020047
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
After spending the last day of 1996 investigating the city's 13th homicide of the year, Roanoke police had made no arrests in Monday night's shooting on Chapman Avenue Southwest.
Police had identified the victim, a 33-year-old man from Northeast Roanoke, but were withholding his name Tuesday night until family members could be notified.
After responding to reports of shots fired about 10:50 p.m. Monday near 13th Street and Chapman, police found a man lying face down on a sidewalk. The victim had been shot in the head and was pronounced dead at the scene.
A local resident told police that he heard two shots and saw the man lying on the sidewalk about the same time he spotted two teen-agers running through the parking lot of a nearby convenience store.
The body - clad in a maroon jacket, yellow plaid shirt, blue jeans and baseball cap - was found in front of some concrete steps leading up to a two-story house. A woman who lived in the house said she was in her bedroom watching television when she heard four gunshots.
Several residents said it is not unusual to hear gunshots in that part of the West End neighborhood.
Although there had been no arrests, police said late Tuesday that investigators were "following up on various information received during the day."
The Chapman Avenue shooting raised Roanoke's yearly homicide count to 13. That's assuming that two men found dead last week on Day Avenue Southwest died as the result of a murder-suicide. Police have not made a final determination, but say that several indications - a gun found next to one of the bodies and no signs of forced entry to the apartment - make murder-suicide a likely possibility.
There were 15 homicides in 1995 in Roanoke.
December was 1996's deadliest month in Roanoke, with four homicides. The most killings in any other month of the year was two. None of the killings this month - two of which occurred in Southwest Roanoke - appear to be related.
Of the 13 people killed in 1996, seven were shot, four were stabbed and two - Manfred and Wanda Woody - were beaten to death with a frying pan. Police have made arrests in all of the cases except Monday's shooting, the killing of the Woodys in their Day Avenue apartment in June and the apparent murder-suicide.
There were also two fatal shootings by police officers in 1996 that were ruled justifiable by Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell, who determined that officers in both instances feared for their lives after firearms were brandished.
Staff writer Jon Cawley contributed to this report.
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