Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Concerned Craig Creek residents convene for update on Caldwell Fields killings
Those who live on Craig Creek Road are still uneasy that a killer has not been caught.
Earlier coverage
- Police seek help from hunters, hikers
- Task force continues to get tips on killings
- Reward in killings increases to $50,000
- Task force to probe students' killings
- Hundreds mourn slain Lynchburg teens
- Police still chasing leads about Va. Tech student shootings
- Virginia Tech announces $10,000 reward for information about killings
- Funerals for Tech students set for Monday afternoon
- Police still seek leads in deaths of Tech students
- Few clues, many tears in deaths of Tech students
- Caldwell Fields neighbors did not hear shots
- Dan Casey: Neighbors shaken after meadow becomes killing field
- Police seek suspects in Virginia Tech students' killings
Guest books
Leave remembrances and messages
Heidi Childs and David Metzler, seen here in a photo from her Facebook profile, were inseparable.
Statements
Maybe a cellphone tower or a streetlight or a concealed weapons permit would make them feel safer, Craig Creek Road residents said Monday.
But what they really want, they said, is to know that they are safe from whoever killed two Virginia Tech students in late August.
About 75 people who live on both the Montgomery County and Craig County sides of Craig Creek Road turned out for a community meeting Monday night at Camp Tuk-A-Way to have a chance to hear from Montgomery County Sheriff Tommy Whitt.
"You should feel as safe today as you did the week before this happened," Whitt told one woman who asked if she and her grandchildren were safe.
Residents say the security they felt in the remote community was shattered the morning of Aug. 27, when the bodies of David Metzler, 19, of Lynchburg and Heidi Childs, 18, of Forest were found in a parking lot and day-use area at Caldwell Fields, a group camping site in the Jefferson National Forest on the Montgomery County side of the road. Both had been shot, and no one has been charged in their killings.
Some people came out Monday with hopes of learning more about the crimes, but no details were revealed.
"I don't come here with a lot of information," Whitt told the crowd.
He said there are things about the crime known only by the person or persons responsible and members of the multiagency task force formed to investigate it.
If everyone is familiar with the details of the crime, he said, "it is common knowledge, and therefore it is useless."
One man said he understood that investigators couldn't share information. All he wanted to know, he said, was whether Whitt felt confident that the case would be solved.
"I am cautiously optimistic," Whitt said. He said not a day goes by that investigators aren't working a lead in the case.
After the hourlong meeting, some residents talked about re-forming their defunct Neighborhood Watch group. Others discussed holding a concealed weapons permit class for the community.
"It's always been comfortable here" before the killings, Tina Hypes said.
She said she came to the meeting hoping to hear something about the killer or killers that would help put her mind at ease.
"I was hoping," she said. "that they would reassure us that they are not here, living on the creek."
