THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Saturday, September 23, 1995           TAG: 9509230254
SECTION: LOCAL                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER 
DATELINE: SUFFOLK                            LENGTH: Short :   39 lines

DRIVE-UP PATRON HONKS HIS HORN, CAR IS SPRAYED WITH GUNSHOTS

A drive-up restaurant customer who had received his food order but had not pulled up far enough in line responded with gunshots when a driver behind him honked his horn early Friday, police said.

A 25-year-old Portsmouth man who was a passenger in the second car was wounded.

Mike Simpkins, a police spokesman, said the shooting occurred about 2 a.m. at the Dairy Queen on North Main Street.

The driver of the first vehicle had received his order and had pulled away from the drive-up window - but not far enough to allow the next car to pull up to the window. The driver of the second vehicle blew the car's horn.

That apparently angered the driver of the first car.

``He got out of his vehicle and walked back to the car,'' Simpkins said. ``When he got to the window, he started shooting into the car with a 9 mm handgun.''

The spray of bullets but missed the driver. Instead, two shots hit Gary Pace of the 5000 block of Vick St., who was sitting in the rear seat.

Pace, who was struck in the head and an arm, was treated at Louise Obici Memorial Hospital and released.

After the shooting, the man who fired the shots got back into his 1993 Chevrolet and drove away.

Police later arrested Dennie Carl Noble IV, 23, of the 500 block of Tazewell St. in Portsmouth. He is charged with malicious wounding, using a firearm in a felony and shooting into an occupied vehicle.

Noble is being held in the Tidewater Regional Jail on $3,000 bond.

KEYWORDS: ASSAULT SHOOTING HANDGUN by CNB