Saturday, August 29, 2009
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Neighbors shaken after meadow becomes killing field
JUSTIN COOK The Roanoke Times
Investigators search for clues Friday near a memorial in Caldwell Fields where two Virginia Tech students were shot to death.
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
dan.casey
@roanoke.com
981-4423
Dan Casey
Recent columns
- Sarah Palin's fans cheered her wildly
- System tough even for ex-nurse
- Take a look at Palin's rule book
Read Dan's blog
The investigation: Ongoing coverage
- Search warrant shows sweatshirt, hairs, car collected
- Live stream of Metzler and Childs funerals
- Funerals for slain Va. Tech students happening now in Lynchburg
From today's paper
- Caldwell Fields neighbors did not hear shots
- Few clues, many tears in the deaths of Virginia Tech students
Guest books
Leave remembrances and messages
Heidi Childs and David Metzler, seen here in a photo from her Facebook profile, were inseparable.
Earlier coverage
Story
Statements
Cathy Taylor and her husband, Steve McMahan, live on Craig Creek Road in northern Montgomery County.
Their place is about 5 miles west of Caldwell Fields camping and recreation area, a broad and wildflower-filled series of meadows wedged between the tall, bumpy ridges of Brush and Sinking Creek mountains in the Jefferson National Forest.
Friday about noon, the somber couple drove out to Caldwell Fields, one of their favorite places, about 15 miles from the Virginia Tech campus.
As rain sprinkled, they tied a small bouquet of flowers to a weathered fence that edges the Addison Caldwell parking area and sat in their car and reflected.
The flowers were a lone memorial to David Lee Metzler and Heidi Lynn Childs, the Virginia Tech sophomores found gruesomely shot to death in a gravel lot Thursday morning.
Both Taylor and McMahan have a hard time reconciling the savagery of those killings with the quiet solitude of the setting.
"It's such a peaceful, serene place," said Taylor, who often runs past the mountain-flanked meadows. "It's almost a spiritual place. I'm very sad."
"It's strange," added McMahan. "They create a place like this that's so serene, and then something like this happens. It's perverse."
Sad and strange were common up and down Craig Creek Road's 20 curvy and rolling miles Friday.
Others were shock, fear, and nagging concerns that larger-town violent crime had finally visited the grassy pastures and thickly forested glades of their rural neighborhood.
"I didn't sleep at all last night," said Myra Webb, who for the past decade has lived with her husband, Steve, in a modest one-story rancher about a mile west of the camping and picnicking area. Theirs is the closest house to Caldwell Fields.
"Of all the times we have watched the news, and there was extreme violence in other neighborhoods, but when it happens in your front yard then you understand why people become nervous and apprehensive," Webb said.
Webb said she and her husband heard nothing suspicious Wednesday night or early Thursday, the time frame in which investigators presume Metzler and Childs were killed in a way the Montgomery County sheriff has labeled "brutal" and "ugly."
But even if she had heard shots, that wouldn't be unusual.
"There's a lot of shooting around, even when there's no hunting season," she said. People frequently come out to the national forest for target practice.
Normally Craig Creek Road is quiet. But on nice weekends when classes are in session at Virginia Tech, it's a conduit for hundreds of students who stream to Caldwell Fields to camp, party or play in nature.
"There are hundreds of them when they come, but they never have been any trouble, except for speeding on the road," Webb said.
Two deputies I found at the crime scene Friday morning said violence was almost unheard of in the area.
"It's typically just drinking violations," said Montgomery Sheriff's Cpl. Jason Milburn. "Drinking in public, that sort of thing."
Jason Hutchinson, 31, has lived with his family for all his life just about 2 miles east of Caldwell Fields, just over the Craig County line.
"I know it's pretty sad," he said of the killings. "It don't make you feel too good when you think about it that close to your front door."
About 3 miles west of the recreation area, Saford and Linda Hughes live in a small cabin on the north side of the road, with a wood stove for heat and an outdoor privy. They've been married for 47 years and reared a son and daughter there.
Saford Hughes, 66, was born and raised along the road.
"We just don't have [violent crime] down here," Linda Hughes said. "It's a good place to live, and raise a family, and learn the values of life."
But Thursday morning's events had clearly unnerved them. Much remains unclear about the killings, including who did them and why.
"Probably not knowing why it was done makes it more scary," Hughes said.
"It just give you a sick feeling in your stomach," added Saford Hughes.
Their thoughts on Friday were with the families of the two slain students.
"Their people have got to be going through an unbelievable time, the parents," Saford Hughes said.
"Ain't nothing we can do to help but feel sorry for the families," Linda Hughes added. "You got to think, 'Oh my, but what they're going through today.' "
