THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 22, 1996 TAG: 9609220016
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE AND ELIZABETH THIEL, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 167 lines
Police had been talking to the gunman on the phone off and on during the four-hour standoff. He'd even let them speak with his ex-wife, whom he had tied up in a bedroom after allegedly killing her boyfriend with a shotgun blast through the front door.
Going by the book, time was on the cops' side. In similar situations, the suspect usually calms down and eventually surrenders without further bloodshed.
But just minutes after they had talked to 39-year-old Susan Driscoll, police heard a single gunshot early Saturday from the College Square town house.
Witnesses watched as heavily armed officers surrounding the area jerked from their positions as if to pounce, but then paused. Minutes later, about 12:15 a.m., Dana T. Driscoll, 41, walked out, knelt down and surrendered.
Susan Driscoll was found dead inside. The body of her boyfriend, Walter D. Cartwright Jr., 49, lay on the sidewalk, covered with a sheet.
Dana Driscoll, of the 700 block of Sparrow Road, was handcuffed in the rear of a police car. He laid his head across the seat back, turned slightly to the left and stared aimlessly out the window, his mouth hanging open, as he was driven away to a jail cell.
He is being held without bail on two counts each of first degree murder and use of a gun while committing a felony.
``That's not what the experts say'' should have happened, Lou Thurston, a police spokesman, said of the second shooting. ``Most often than not, you're successful in talking the person down and talking them out. This is just a situation that . . . didn't come out the way we hoped it would.''
And the morning after, neighbors were left to look at the silver-dollar-sized hole in the front door, which Cartwright had apparently slammed shut when confronted by the gunman, only to have a shotgun blast rip through it and him.
They also could look at the small flower arrangement left on the stoop. And wonder at what had gone so terribly wrong that two lives had been lost and a third ruined.
Adria L. Phipps, 23, was watching television with her mother and younger sister Friday night. It was a pleasant evening, cool under a starry sky. She had opened the front window of her town house in the 1100 block of Riviera Drive.
It's a neighborhood of neat homes and clean yards; home to a mix of families, many young and many with military ties.
``We've never had any problems out here,'' Phipps said. ``It's a very quiet, nice neighborhood.''
She said she knew Susan Driscoll and Cartwright. ``They were neighborly. There was nothing out of the ordinary'' about them, she said.
Police said Susan Driscoll had divorced her husband about two years ago. Neighbors said she and two children from the marriage had been living at the Riviera Drive address since, and that Cartwright, of the 1200 block of Swallow Drive, was often there. Police did not say where the children were Saturday.
``I spoke with one of the relatives, and they said it had been . . . a nasty divorce,'' Phipps said.
She wasn't thinking of them Friday night, however, when she heard a blast just before 8 p.m. ``It sounded like a cannon,'' she recalled Saturday. ``We jumped up. It was just like, out of nowhere.''
It was enough to make pictures on the wall shake. Still, she thought little of it. Pranksters, probably, lighting off firecrackers in a nearby field. Or maybe a car accident on busy Indian River Road just down the street.
At police headquarters, Thurston said, a woman called to report that a man had just been shot, that she had fled to an upstairs bedroom and that the gunman was still in the house - and now in her room.
Then the line went dead.
Police and rescue crews were sent.
Phipps heard the sirens a few minutes later.
She looked outside and saw police five doors away. A few minutes later, there was an insistent knock at her door, and a detective told her she and her family must flee. Quickly.
They went to her mother's home around the corner, where they could still see some of the activity at the embattled home.
Others also watched, like Justin Metsker's wife, who called him at work from their home across the street from the shooting. ``She was frantic and wanted me to come home,'' he said. He jumped in his car.
Police sealed off the area. SWAT team members took up positions in bushes and behind vehicles, keeping the house in their sights. Officers threw up hundreds of yards of yellow tape and blocked traffic for blocks.
Police negotiators called the house and got the gunman on the phone. What was said, police will not disclose. But the fact that there was a dialogue was a positive sign.
Experience in such standoffs shows that talk is good. Gunmen have a chance to calm down or sober up - although alcohol apparently was not a factor in this case, Thurston said. They can think about what has happened, discuss the reasons and, often, be convinced not to worsen matters.
The intermittent exchanges continued Friday. The man agreed to let rescue crews retrieve the man who had been shot. A very good sign.
About 9:30 p.m., rescue personnel broke open the front window - the door was locked - and went in to get Cartwright. They dragged his body in a sheet down the sidewalk past five doors and around the corner, trailing blood on the concrete.
But there was nothing they could do for him, Thurston said. He was dead.
Michael Headlee, 22, was unaware of what was happening when he turned off of Indian River Road and into a line of bright flares and police cars blocking the path to his home.
``I talked to the police, and they said to come back later,'' he said. As he waited, he found some neighbors, also blocked from going home, and asked them what was happening.
Headlee was shocked to learn that all the police attention focused on the town house next door to the one he and his family have lived in for two years.
They waited. And waited. Finally, he and wife went to a nearby motel where they spent the night.
But for Metsker, a motel was no option. The 24-year-old, fresh out of the Navy, was determined to reach his wife deep inside the police lines.
He parked at a gas station nearby and convinced a police officer that he lived in a building just on the other side of the blockade. ``I was kind of sneaky about it,'' Metsker said.
Once admitted past police lines, he scurried for home.
He cut behind the buildings he had said he lived in, crossed some lawns, walked along a row of bushes and finally made a dash to his front door. He joined his wife at an upstairs window overlooking the entire standoff scene. ``It was pretty intense,'' Metsker said. ``The place was a fortress.''
SWAT members eyed the house from every angle, trying to figure out what was happening inside. With curtains drawn, however, they could see little.
Meanwhile, negotiators were still talking with the gunman from time to time. It was past midnight when there was an apparent breakthrough: The gunman agreed to let the negotiators talk to Susan Driscoll.
They heard her voice and confirmed, for the first time, that she was alive.
Hopes rose that the standoff would end with her release. A moment later, they crashed.
About 12:15 a.m., ``I heard the second gunshot,'' Metsker said.
``When I didn't see the lady coming out, I knew it was her that got shot,'' Metsker said.
Minutes later, the door opened and a man emerged, hands in the air.
``The police were shouting at him, `Where's the weapon? Where's the weapon?' And he said he didn't have the gun,'' Metsker said. ``They made him turn and face the pool and then walk backwards and drop to his knees.''
Suddenly, it was over.
Police lines came down. Forensic technicians moved in. Two cats and a bird were carried out. Photographs were taken. The gunman's car towed. Bodies removed. The police left.
Evidence of the terror hours earlier was still abundant Saturday.
A piece of plywood covered much of the living room window, its shattered glass on the ground where rescue workers had broken in to retrieve Cartwright. A lamp inside was still lit, its shade bent sharply to one side. Shades remained drawn on the upstairs windows.
The front door bore the large hole made by the first shotgun blast. Just inches from it, an orange and black sticker warned that the interior posed a ``bio hazard'' to anyone entering. Inside, forensics technicians had marked the wall that had taken some of the errant shotgun pellets. Each of the seven holes was labeled alphabetically, A through G.
At the foot of the door someone had placed a small arrangement of pink, white and yellow flowers with a note of condolence: ``Thinking of you.''
A yellow city school bus was parked nearby. Residents said it was the bus Susan Driscoll had driven.
``You always see it on TV, but you don't expect it in your neighborhood,'' Metsker said as he stood on the sidewalk outside the home.
It was, Metsker said, an isolated incident that ``could happen anywhere.'' But, he added, ``I'm just glad it wasn't my family.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
MIKE HEFFNER/The Virginian-Pilot
Mike McKnight, 13, looks Saturday at the front of Susan Driscoll's
home, where a hole made by a shotgun blast marks the front door. At
the foot of the door someone had placed a small flower arrangement.
Dana T. Driscoll, 41, is being held without bail.
KEYWORDS: MURDER SHOOTING ARREST by CNB