J. W. Man charged in 8 rural Virginia shooting deaths
by koolaid-man 21 Replies latest jw friends
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TheOldHippie
"Co-workers who knew Speight as a calm, fervent Jehovah's Witness who liked to shoot said they were astounded by the allegations. Speight was a shooter more than a hunter, and guns were one of the main interests of his life, said Anderson."
Don't know how it is in the US, but here in Europe, "like to shoot" is something no JW does, and having guns as a "main interest" would DEFINITELY be a no-no ..............
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carla
I think I have read in the past that if jw's are in an area where hunting is part of life the jw's do in fact go hunting so it would not be unusual that a jw shoots if that is the case. I dunno, hard to keep track of all the 'unity' in dubland, obviously.
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bohm
Around here it is not unusual for JWs to hunt, even elders.
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RR
Perhaps he was practicing for armageddon. Target practice on apostates
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MsDucky
I just read a story about the shooting. The story that I read didn't mention his religion. This is tragic. I wonder what really set him off?
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MsDucky
Kool-Aid, I can't get your link to work.
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crapola
The link doesn't work for me either.
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skeeter1
Man charged in 8 rural Virginia shooting deaths
By Fredrick Kunkle and Josh White
Washington Post Updated: 01/21/2010 01:07:15 AM CSTAPPOMATTOX, Va. — Christopher Bryan Speight described himself in court papers as a dependable, hardworking person who was not quick to anger, and he showed pride in his ability to "find ways to get out of problems without using force or violence."
Friends, in letters in support of his successful 1995 application for a concealed weapons permit, called him "an upstanding, Christian young man" and "very mature and responsible."
But something happened in recent years that changed Speight, friends say.
It started when his mother died in 2006. "He said he had a 'zinging' in his ears. I can't explain it the way he explained it," said David Anderson, 54, who worked with Speight and became friendly with him. Anderson said Speight told him that he began seeing a therapist but that it didn't help much. He had grown worse recently. "He had gotten quieter in the past six months," Anderson said.
Something must have been building, Anderson said. On Tuesday, authorities allege, Speight, 39, shot his sister, his brother-in-law and their two children, along with four family friends, in a rampage that left eight dead, the worst mass slaying in Virginia since a single shooter killed 33 people at Virginia Tech in 2007.
Although police had not identified the victims by Wednesday night, family friends said the dead included four adults, three teenagers who attended Appomattox High School and a little boy about 4 or 5 years old. Four victims were found inside his house,
Advertisement three immediately outside it and one in the middle of a nearby road.A family friend, Dakota Henderson, 17, who dated Speight's niece and did target shooting with Speight, identified the dead teenagers as Speight's niece, Morgan Dobyns, and her friends Emily Quarles and Bo Scruggs, each of whom had memorial pages up Wednesday on Facebook. Property records and online memorials named Speight's sister as Lauralee Speight Dobyns. The other two killed were related to Quarles, according to Henderson and posts on Facebook offering condolences.
Speight never married, and his sister appeared to be his only family.
Although a motive for the shootings remained elusive, friends said Speight had talked of a family dispute about ownership of the house and land, which sits off a dirt road in wooded farmland about 200 miles from Washington. Speight's mother left the 34-acre property jointly to Speight and his sister, court records show.
Speight thought his sister and brother-in-law were seeking to force him out of the house and dispossess him of it, Anderson said. Speight said that the couple, who moved into the three-bedroom house about a year ago, promised to help him build a home on the property and that they cleared timber for the site — a job for which Speight thought he had done the lion's share of work. But the house was not built, and Speight confided he felt as if he had chopped wood mostly to fill the stove, Anderson said.
On Wednesday, Speight, donning a bulletproof vest and camouflage pants, emerged from the Appomattox woods where he had fled after the shootings and turned himself in to a police SWAT team, ending a 20-hour hunt during which he used a high-powered rifle to hold police at bay, authorities said. Police said his well-aimed shots forced a state police helicopter to make an emergency landing after its fuel tank was pierced and more than 150 law enforcement officials had been combing the woods for him overnight.
After Speight's arrest, police carefully examined his white-painted home with bomb-sniffing dogs. Technicians recovered seven explosive devices later Wednesday, the state police said.
Appomattox Commonwealth's Attorney Darrel Puckett said Wednesday night that Speight was charged with one count of first-degree murder.
Puckett said he would meet with law enforcement officials after the crime scene investigation is complete to determine what, if any, additional charges to pursue. Puckett said he would consider levying capital charges, which could carry the death penalty. "It's a pretty horrific thing to happen anywhere, but Appomattox is a rural community, this is my home and it's a lot of really good folks who make up the Appomattox community," Puckett said. "For something like this to happen, it just shakes everyone to the core."
The slayings stunned this rural county, which is best known for being the place where Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865, effectively ending the Civil War.
Co-workers who knew Speight as a calm, fervent Jehovah's Witness who liked to shoot said they were astounded by the allegations. Speight was a shooter more than a hunter, and guns were one of the main interests of his life, said Anderson.
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miseryloveselders
"The devout Jehovah's Witness had changed in recent months, becoming increasingly detached and anxious, friends and colleagues tell the Washington Post. "