ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 9, 1997 TAG: 9704090054
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: GREENEVILLE, TENN.
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Police arrested 6 young people traveling in the stolen van in Arizona near the Mexican border.
A couple and their 6-year-old daughter were shot to death near a highway rest stop by a gang of robbers who stole their van as they returned home from a conference of Jehovah's Witnesses.
The couple's 3-year-old son was also shot Sunday night and was in critical condition Tuesday.
Six young people, including two juveniles, were arrested Tuesday in Arizona by U.S. Customs agents while driving the van near the Mexican border. The six, ranging in age from 14 to 20 and all from the Paintsville, Ky., area, were charged with three counts of murder.
Vidar Lillelid, 34, and his wife, Delphia, 28, were found dead in a ditch Sunday night along a gravel road three miles from the rest stop.
Their daughter, Tabitha, was found alive in her father's lap and died Monday at a hospital. Her brother, Peter, was cradled in his mother's lap.
The family had spent the weekend at the conference in Johnson City and had stopped at the rest area near the town of Baileyton along Interstate 81 on their way home to Powell, Sheriff Terry Jones said.
They apparently were taken to the gravel road, removed from their van and shot several times, he said. The killers robbed them of their wallets and identification and apparently took the van.
A car belonging to one of the suspect's mothers was found in the ditch.
While Jones said the slayings weren't believed to be linked to any satanic cult activity, the mother of another suspect said her 18-year-old daughter was into the occult. ``Something has gone haywire,'' said Madonna Wallen from her Betsy Layne, Ky., home. ``Something has gone really, really wrong. I don't see any of these children committing murder in their right mind.''
Lillelid, who was from Norway, worked as a bellman at a Holiday Inn in Knoxville. He and his wife met in Miami and married in 1989.
``They decided things were a little on the rough side in Miami, and they wanted to move to get away from the violence, among other reasons,'' said John McLaughlin, an elder at the West Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses in Knoxville, which the Lillelids attended.
LENGTH: Medium: 55 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS. Vidar and Delphia Lillelid of Powell,by CNBTenn., were killed with their daughter Tabitha. Their bodies were
left in a ditch near a rest stop. Peter survived the shooting.
color. KEYWORDS: FATALITY