Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 16, 1995 TAG: 9503160049
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
Robert Denver Spence, 25, a husband and father of three, was pronounced dead at 7:10 a.m. Wednesday at Roanoke Memorial Hospital.
Town police were continuing an investigation. No charges had been filed because police were trying to determine how the shooting happened.
Police were called to a house in the 600 block of Highland Terrace at 8:18 p.m. when someone reported a fight in progress with shots fired.
Officers arrived within two minutes, Cmdr. Barry Buckner said, and found Spence lying in the front doorway with a gunshot wound to his head.
Spence's wife told police the couple had not been at the house very long when the shooting happened.
Police spent Tuesday night and Wednesday interviewing witnesses.
Police were releasing few details of the events leading to Spence's shooting or the type of the weapon used.
Investigators are "continuing to sort out the stories and come up with the facts," Buckner said. That task was compounded, police said, because some of the people may have been under the influence of alcohol.
One of the witnesses was jailed Tuesday night on a charge of public drunkenness, police said, and was released Wednesday morning.
Spence was an organ donor, and an autopsy was conducted after his organs were harvested. He died of a single gunshot, which entered his left forehead area, Buckner said.
Spence is the second person to meet a violent death in Pulaski this year.
Terry Kenneth Morris, 48, died Feb. 26 from head wounds sustained in a January beating. Enoch S. Dunagan of Sutphin Circle has been charged with murder in that case.
Police believe Morris was beaten because Dunagan's wife had told him that Morris - who had been living with the Dunagans - had assaulted two of the couple's children.
Keywords:
FATALITY
Memo: ***CORRECTION***