THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 25, 1994 TAG: 9411250046
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON FRANK, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
Nowadays, when Charles Farmer dreams, he sees the same image, night after night.
It's always a man with a gun.
That nightmare has haunted Farmer since the rainy evening of March 1, when Todd Moore approached Farmer's car as he sat in a parking lot near Maryview Medical Center.
Moore had just escaped from a Portsmouth sheriff's deputy. The deputy had taken Moore - charged with murder and allegedly one of the East Coast's leading crack dealers - from the City Jail to a doctor's office next to the medical center.
Moore opened the door of Farmer's car and got in, waving in his startled face a gun taken from the deputy. Moore, once the captive, suddenly became the captor.
``He said, `I just got away from the sheriff. Drive,' '' Farmer, 29, of Chesapeake, recalled recently. ``He said he wasn't going back, and would kill us both. I believed him.''
That began Farmer's brief but terrible ride on the violent crime wave. It ended four hours later with Moore's capture by law-enforcement officers in North Carolina, after a wild car trip through Hampton Roads and down U.S. Route 17 to Elizabeth City.
``The police didn't know who I was,'' Farmer said, ``so they arrested me, too.''
Moore has since been sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Farmer, the crime victim, said he, too, was given a sentence. He said he has been on anti-depressant and anti-anxiety drugs since March 2, after he returned to Virginia for a tearful reunion with his terrified wife and 5-year-old son.
But that was just the beginning of what has become a long, rocky attempt at normalcy for Farmer and his family.
The drug therapy almost cost him his job at a nursing home in Portsmouth's Churchland section, Farmer said. He couldn't drive while on medication, so he couldn't transport nursing home residents - the job he was performing on the night he was kidnapped.
A change in medication made driving possible again and saved his job, Farmer said.
Farmer also had to testify against Moore, although he pleaded with authorities not to make him do it because he was afraid to see Moore again and relive the events of March 1.
Now, Farmer said, he has an irrational fear of venturing out of his house in rural Chesapeake. He still sees a therapist and remains on medication.
``I go to my job and then I go home,'' Farmer said. ``I don't go out in public anymore unless I have to. I guess time heals all wounds, but it is going to take a lot of time.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color staff photo by CHRISTOPHER REDDICK/
Charles Farmer, who survived an abduction at gunpoint last March,
says he - not just his abductor - was given a sentence.
KEYWORDS: ABDUCTION by CNB