THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 1, 1995 TAG: 9501010087
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE ADDIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
Life on Little Creek Road was back to normal so quickly Saturday that many people running their weekend errands were unaware that the nation's most intense manhunt had ended there just before noon in a spray of gunfire and shattered glass.
By 2 p.m., a short strand of crime-scene tape and a single police officer were the only signs that anything was amiss at the front of The Bel Aire Building at 1600 E. Little Creek Road, which houses Hillcrest Clinic on its second floor.
Gearing up for a party night, people lined up four deep at both windows of the NationsBank automatic teller. They were unaware that just a few feet away, around the back, a man wanted for two murders at abortion clinics in Massachusetts had allegedly ratcheted off 23 shots from a semiautomatic rifle into the building's glass double doorways.
``What, looks like a little excitement here again, huh?'' asked Jeff Miller, a Navy man walking away from the ATM machine. Told of what had happened, Miller shook his head.
``Well, it's unexpected, that's for sure,'' he said. ``We pulled up here to use the ATM the other day and it was gutted out, and now this.'' An automatic teller at the other end of the building was set ablaze on Christmas, but that apparently had no connection to the abortion clinic.
The burned ATM booth on the building's east end was boarded up before Saturday's attack. Smoke stains ran from the ground to the roof. With its back doors now shattered and bullet holes marring two doors out front, the building looked like a small piece of Sarajevo plopped down in the midst of one of Norfolk's busiest commercial districts.
Miller said he didn't even know there was an abortion clinic in the building. Hillcrest's presence is not advertised on the street side.
``I guess, when you think about it, it's not really that surprising,'' he said of the attack. ``You see this stuff happening everywhere else. You say it can never happen in your area, but then one day it just does.''
Little Creek Road runs east to west across Norfolk like a four-lane, neon-and-asphalt hallway connecting Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base to the east and Norfolk Naval Station to the west. Its eastern end is a bazaar of fast-food restaurants, car dealerships, taverns and strip shopping centers, largely unbroken by private housing. It's a busy place at any hour, but especially so on the Saturday afternoon of New Year's Eve.
Melanie Patterson, a Navy electronics chief, had also pulled up to hit the ATM machine. She knew nothing of what had happened on the other side of the building.
``Does it surprise me? No, not at all,'' she said. ``You see these people every day picketing and you see a lot of cars with those (anti-abortion) bumper stickers. They're really very dominant.''
``Besides,'' said Patterson, who lives in the Wards Corner area, ``we get murders around here all the time. It's not that startling.''
Allen Calcavecchia, who was picking up a sackful of Zero's submarine sandwiches for pro-football fans hanging out at his nearby apartment, said he'd heard a snatch of a radio report about the shooting, but had no idea it had played out just down the street.
``Whoa,'' he said, ``I thought they were still talking about that stuff up in Massachusetts. You mean it happened right over there?'' he asked, pointing across the street.
Calcavecchia said it was surprising that John C. Salvi III, the Massachusetts fugitive, had been arrested after the shooting. But he said wasn't all that shocked at the attack on Hillcrest Clinic.
``Anything at all can happen on this street,'' he said, looking east toward The Bel Aire Building. ``As long as this street is open, nothing much would surprise me. And this street never closes.''
KEYWORDS: ABORTION CLINICS ANTI-ABORTION SHOOTING ARREST by CNB