THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Tuesday, July 26, 1994                 TAG: 9407260326
SECTION: LOCAL                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY JON FRANK, STAFF WRITER 
DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS                       LENGTH: Medium:   71 lines

POLICE SNIPER KILLS GUNMAN SHOOTING ENDS NEWPORT NEWS STANDOFF

   A police sharpshooter ended a 1 1/2-hour standoff Monday when he shot and 
killed a Gloucester County man who had fired at least four shots from a 
handgun during a fight with his girlfriend at a Denbigh-area motel.
   The Newport News Police Department's Tactical Squad sniper  was on the 
second floor of a building directly across from the couple's room at the Capri
Motel at 12880 Jefferson Ave. He fired one shot from a high-powered 
   Roth identified the dead man as Donald D. VanFossen Jr., 35, of Hayes.  
Roth would not identify the woman.
   Police were called to the motel about 8 a.m., Roth said, after a report 
that a man was beating a woman. 
   The decision to use deadly force was made about 1 1/2 hours later, after 
the standoff took a sudden turn. The woman ran from the motel room in an 
attempt to escape, Roth said, and VanFossen grabbed her on the sidewalk and 
dragged her back into their room. In plain view of police, VanFossen then 
wrestled the woman to the floor of the motel room and put the gun to her 
head.
   ``At this time the sniper had to take the man out,'' Roth said. ``That was 
the end of the situation.''
   Roth said police recovered the handgun from the room. He said it appeared 
that VanFossen had not fired the gun at his girlfriend or anyone else, but had
simply discharged it four or five times during the standoff.
   Other residents of the motel awakened Monday by the sound of VanFossen's 
gunfire were terrified to discover that the motel was the scene of a police 
tactical operation.
   ``All the cops were yelling,'' said James Adams, 21, who lives at the 
Capri, several doors away from where the shooting occurred. ``I opened my 
door, and they hollered at me to get back in my room.''
   Tracy Porter, 25, who also lives at the Capri, two doors from where 
VanFossen and the woman stayed, said she heard an argument and then glass 
shattering.
   ``Suddenly the police were everywhere,'' Porter said.
   Porter said VanFossen and the woman checked into the motel on Friday. The 
couple had behaved strangely and had been fighting, she said.
   On Sunday, Porter said, the woman was smoking a glass pipe in VanFossen's 
Ford truck, which is fitted with a camper top. 
   ``He hollered at her to get back into the room and she hollered back at him
to get away,'' Porter said. 
   She said the woman appeared  to have been physically abused.  She had two 
black eyes this weekend, Porter said. 
   Immediately after the incident at the Capri Motel, the department's 
Tactical and Assault Team was called to the 4700 block of Jefferson Ave. A man
distraught over a breakup with his girlfriend was threatening suicide. 
   That crisis ended without injury, Roth said, when police fired tear gas 
into the building and the man came out.


ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
          LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff
          Police inspect the site of a shooting at the Capri Hotel in Newport 
          News. A gunman was shot and killed by police there Monday.
          
          
          Map
          STAFF

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