ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 31, 1996 TAG: 9601310080
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: LEESBURG
SOURCE: Associated Press
Even friends of Robert Lorenz say he was the neighborhood stick-in-the mud - crabby and given to lecturing his suburban neighbors.
But prosecutors say he snapped during a confrontation with a raucous, drunken neighbor and shot him to death over damage skateboarding teen-agers did to Lorenz' prized flower garden.
Lorenz, 54, sat with his hands folded before him on the defense table as his first-degree murder trial began in Loudoun County Circuit Court on Tuesday. Lorenz was charged in the April 9 death of Duren Wayne Eldridge, 31.
The shooting in Lorenz' front yard was the culmination of an afternoon of escalating enmity and months of bad blood between the peevish and fastidious Lorenz and his loud, beer-drinking neighbor.
``This is a case involving a dispute among neighbors that escalated from a trivial dispute to a deadly encounter,'' Commonwealth's Attorney Robert D. Anderson said in his opening statement.
While Lorenz enjoyed a quiet day planting flowers and visiting with his family, Eldridge was ``working himself up for a fight. He was determined to have a fight,'' by taunting and insulting his straight-laced older neighbor, defense attorney Mark Shaffer said in his opening arguments.
LENGTH: Short : 34 lines KEYWORDS: FATALITYby CNB