Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 24, 1991 TAG: 9103240031
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: CUMBERLAND LENGTH: Long
At 16, the high school junior was old enough to know he wanted to leave a troubled home, but too young to have an easy way out.
And so, he devised a plan that was at once frighteningly adult and almost pathetically immature. One afternoon this month he walked into a Super Saver store in the neighboring county, drew a .22 revolver and ordered employees and customers, including two children, into a back storeroom.
When the terrifying ordeal ended, Davis made a single demand of the horde of police who had converged on Amelia, a rural crossroads southwest of Richmond. He asked to be sent to jail, not home.
"I told him," said Amelia Sheriff Jimmy Weaver with a wry smile, "we'd be glad to oblige."
After a detention hearing, Davis remains behind bars, and a second Virginia community is puzzling over how one so young could stand accused of a crime so bizarre. In Virginia Beach, 16-year-old Shawn Novak is charged with the grisly March 4 slayings of Scot Weaver, 7, and Daniel Geier, 9.
In Cumberland County, a farming and timbering area already reeling from the recent burning of the high school administration building (another crime involving 16-year-olds), the picture is only beginning to take form. But there are clues to Davis' psyche in the recollections of acquaintances, the observations of law enforcement officers, and the teen-ager's own ramblings as his hostages bartered for their release.
The starting point, said Weaver, is this: "He's an angry young man who apparently had family problems."
What those who sat under Davis' nervous glare March 12 in Amelia recall is a youth who ultimately harmed no one, but who threatened violence and spoke harshly of his parents.
"He told us, `I'm not doing this for money. I want prison time. I don't want to hurt anybody, but if anybody messes up, I will,' " recalled Vicky Sharff, a 27-year-old Amelia housewife who said she kept in mind a "Knott's Landing" television character - a victim of child abuse - as she prodded Davis for details about his life and tried to shield her children, Heather, 5, and Sean, 3.
The children were the first hostages released.
Davis described his parents as believing in "heavy corporal punishment," Sharff said, and boasted that he'd kill them on the spot if given a chance. "I want them to feel the hurt I've felt," she quoted him as saying.
"He said all his mother cared about was gambling, bingo, and all his dad did was work with cars," added Sonya Taylor, assistant manager of the store and the hostage who seemed most endangered. Taylor, who negotiated for Davis with the police, said she had to sit on the floor as he stood behind her, clicking the cylinder of his gun. And after Davis punctured one of his earlobes with a safety pin, she had to insert an earring for him.
Davis' parents, who live outside Cumberland in a trim yellow bungalow with a basketball hoop in the back yard, did not respond to a request for an interview.
There is a wide gap between the hostages' view of Davis and the youth described by acquaintances in Cumberland County. Generally, the hometown picture is of a quiet, courteous teen-ager who never had been in serious trouble and who once was an officer and prize-winning member of the Future Farmers of America.
"He exhibited two behaviors," said James E. Irons, superintendent of schools in the 1,200-student system. "In some situations, he was sort of the life of the party and in the center of things. The next day, I'd see him all by himself."
The death of Davis' older brother several years ago, apparently due to a brain disease or injury, was mentioned both by Davis and several neighbors as a tragedy from which the family - and particularly Davis' mother - had never recovered.
One close neighbor, who declined to be identified, said Mary Davis had set harsh rules for her three remaining children, and severely punished them for any infractions. The father, who works at the Philip Morris plant in Richmond, was frequently away from home, she said.
Officials at the Bureau of Social Services in Cumberland acknowledged that they have received a complaint of child abuse against the Davises' since the hostage-taking, and are investigating it. The officials would not say who initiated the complaint.
Acquaintances present inconsistent images of the Davis family, however.
Sheriff Weaver described family members who showed up for Davis' hearing as "deeply hurt and confused."
The account of Daniel Zimmerman, a 15-year-old who described himself as Davis' best friend, indicates that in at least some instances, the parents' concerns may not have been unwarranted.
Zimmerman, who has been expelled from school and had run-ins with police, claimed that the two frequently drank together. They had become friends, he said, only in the past two years, a period after Davis was no longer in the FFA.
"His parents were real hard. They treated him like he wasn't even there," Zimmerman said. But he also complained: "They wanted him to go to a good college. He told me he just wanted to be himself."
by CNB