ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, April 8, 1997 TAG: 9704080050
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK THE ROANOKE TIMES
Two Roanoke County men had spent the evening playing cards and drinking at a friend's house before tempers flared up.
With a 280-pound drunken man beating on his door at 4 a.m., Pascal Tinsley Jr. fired three shots in self-defense.
At least, that's what he told Roanoke County police officers when they found the body of Rick Knoebel lying just inside the doorway of Tinsley's Bent Mountain home the morning of Feb. 23.
But after hearing testimony from the first officer to arrive on the scene and a detective who later took Tinsley's statement, General District Judge Vincent Lilley ruled there was enough evidence to support a first-degree murder charge against the 56-year-old man.
Lilley certified the case to a grand jury that will meet in June.
When police were called to Tinsley's brown A-frame home on Rocky Road, they found Knoebel dead. He and been shot once in the neck and once in the head. An autopsy found that Knoebel's blood-alcohol content was 0.28 percent - more than three times the level at which someone is considered too intoxicated to drive.
When Detective C.S. Sturgill arrived, Tinsley agreed to give a taped statement.
He and Knoebel, who lived nearby, had been out together that Saturday night, drinking and playing cards at a friend's house, Tinsley told Sturgill.
They wound up back at Tinsley's house, where they drank some more. Tinsley said that when Knoebel began to get rowdy, he offered to take him back to the house they had been at earlier, where Knoebel had left his car.
They both climbed into Tinsley's pickup truck, but it wouldn't start. At that point, Tinsley said, he asked Knoebel if he had been tampering with the truck's engine. When Knoebel denied doing anything to the truck, Tinsley went back inside and locked him out.
A short time later, he told Sturgill, Knoebel began to beat on his door, demanding a ride back to his car.
Tinsley told police that he shot Knoebel because "I was not going to let him hurt me."
When the case gets to Circuit Court, defense attorney Tom Blaylock will make it a case of self-defense.
"My client got scared, he fired three shots and the next thing he knew he was charged with murder," Blaylock said.
Tinsley, who also is charged with the use of a firearm in the commission of murder, was allowed to remain free on bond after Monday's hearing.
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines KEYWORDS: ROMURby CNB