ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 13, 1997 TAG: 9701130056
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-7 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH
SOURCE: Associated Press
Police have reopened the case of a fatal car wreck after receiving a letter from someone who thinks he and his friends caused a woman to crash her minivan by firing a gun and frightening her.
``I decided to write this letter because I cannot take the guilt anymore,'' the author wrote in an anonymous letter mailed to police last week. A copy of the typewritten, unsigned letter also was sent to The Virginian-Pilot.
Mary S. Wallace, 54, of Chesapeake, died of a massive heart attack just before she drove off a Portsmouth street and crashed into a building in July 1994.
``Her heart literally exploded,'' recalled her son-in-law, William Brown, who spoke with the doctor who tried to revive Wallace the night she died.
Her family members learned Friday that gunplay may have led to her death. Lenora Crawford, Wallace's daughter, said she and her family had no idea that a shooting might have led to her death.
In the three-paragraph letter, dated Jan. 3, the writer describes an incident that, he says, occurred July 24, 1994. That night, he says, his friends fired shots from their car ``to have some fun'' with a female motorist, who was so frightened she wrecked her van. ``We were not going to hurt her, just have some fun,'' the writer said.
He said he later learned the woman died in the crash. He wrote the letter to let her family know what happened.
He even described the color of the van - white and brown - and the block in which the accident occurred. He said he was moved to write the letter when his mother died recently.
``I just lost my mom, and, for a week, I did not know how she died,'' the letter says. ``Please tell her family how she died. I know how they must feel.''
Amber Whittaker, spokeswoman for the Portsmouth Police Department, said on Friday that the case would be reassigned.
Crawford said that after her mother's death, her father, Edwin Wallace, ``went downhill.'' He died the following February, devastated by the loss of his wife, she said.
``They were inseparable,'' son-in-law Brown said. ``Her death undoubtedly led to his death.''
LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines KEYWORDS: FATALITYby CNB