Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 25, 1992 TAG: 9201270236
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB MANN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
MEMORIES OF GUNFIRE HAUNT CABBIE
The sultry sun of a bright June day beat down on Yellow Cab No. 25 as Roger Vess pulled to the curb to pick up a fare.With his cab's air-conditioning out, Vess entertained his 14-year-old passenger with conversation about the weather.
The boy responded politely with "yes sirs" as they drove along, and then he asked Vess to pull over in front of an apartment house so he could go inside to get the $7.80 fare.
The boy returned a few moments later, but not with the fare.
He walked past Vess and his taxi. Vess opened the car door to ask him about the money.
The youngster turned and pulled a .38-caliber pistol from beneath his red pullover and fired four shots at Vess.
The first bullet struck the cab driver in his left arm and traveled the circumference of his arm, exiting without hitting a bone. Two bullets struck the cab. The fourth went wild.
"It burnt, real bad," Vess recalls.
At that instant, terrible memories of earlier gunshots in Roger Vess' life reverberated through his mind as he winced from the pain of the bullet wound. While lying down in the seat to dodge other bullets he feared were coming his way, Vess steered his cab down the hill and away from the pistol-firing youngster.
The first blast of gunfire that tore apart Vess' life occurred on Dec. 1, 1961 - the day Roger Vess' father chased his mother into the boiler room of a Roanoke bowling alley and shot her dead with five bullets from a .22-caliber pistol.
Vess has learned to live with his mother's death and even came to know his father again after he served 15 years in prison.
"Prison broke him," Vess said. "He was a different man when he came out. Gentle. All he could say to me about mother was, `Why did I do it?' He didn't know why he had killed her."
And when Roger Vess buried his father eight years ago, he hoped he had buried the memories of gunfire, too.
But now, on this hot summer day in 1991, the trigger-happy 14-year-old gave him a new set of violent memories and bad dreams.
"And I guess I'm paranoid," Vess said. "When a call comes in for that address where I was shot, I won't take it. I can't. The dispatchers try to remember, but sometimes they forget."
Roger Vess will never forget.
The fear he experiences is the fear many Americans encounter in a modern world where a wrong look, a careless step or a misinterpreted phrase might trigger from an angry youth not just a cold stare, but a cold bullet.
Many admit that their fears - particularly when white adults encounter groups of black youths who fit their worst stereotype - usually are unwarranted; young black people, like young white people, for the most part are as innocent and as cordial as young people traditionally have been.
But today, because of the presence of guns and because of the news media's vigor - a vigor few actually quarrel with - in covering incidents of violence, the fears sometimes create a tension between young and old that did not exist in decades past.
Living with the fear that gunfire might strike a third time can sometimes be as hard as living with the murder of his mother, Vess admits. Being a Roanoke cab driver is more dangerous than it used to be. Armed robberies of drivers are on the increase; there have been almost a dozen in recent months.
Contending with his fear is made harder, he says, because the teen-ager who shot him is still on the street.
"They named a new judge, and they wouldn't even tell us who it was. They wouldn't tell us anything when the original judge, who was going to throw the book at him, came off the case," Vess says.
Worse, twice Vess has seen the youngster who shot him.
"Once he was lounging on the hood of a car, and another time I saw him hanging out on a street corner with his pals.
"It is hard to believe because he was charged with malicious wounding, firing a gun in the city, four runaways, and the police said he had a history with guns. . . . But he's out on the street, free as a bird."
The youngster was, in fact, arrested less than 10 minutes after Vess was shot because he continued down the street, firing shots in the air.
"He must have shot up with something real wild in that apartment," Vess says.
Vess says he tries to control his anger, but that it "lays on my mind, although I have a forgiving heart."
He also knows there may come day when that 14-year-old might again hail a cab and Roger Vess might be at the wheel.