The Roanoke Times

Printed Oct. 1, 2000

Music and light spilled out of the Backstreet Cafe that Friday night, beckoning to those outside. After a warm week, the temperature had dropped below 60 degrees, and a light drizzle fogged the air.

So no one thought it unusual when the bearded stranger in a black trench coat walked in.

He went to the bar, ordered a beer and walked over to two tables pulled together in the corner. Gesturing to one of the few empty seats, he asked the people sitting there, "Can I sit here?"

Gene Flowers glanced up from his Michelob Light. Sure, he said, have a seat. Then he went back to talking to his good friend Danny Overstreet. Cigarette smoke swirled in the dim light, while the clacking of balls at the bar's single pool table punctuated the soft hum of voices.

"Everybody was laughing, moving from table to table, talking. The jukebox was playing," Kathy Caldwell remembered.

John Collins, noticing his friends at the table, grabbed his Zima from the bar. He walked over and knelt on the floor between Gene and Danny, joining the animated conversation interrupted only by Danny's booming laugh. Across the table, the stranger said nothing as he sipped his beer and glanced around the crowded room.

The trio paid the man no mind. Neither did the group of women gathered around the other end of the table.

No one had the slightest clue that about 10 minutes earlier, the man had walked up to an employee in an alley outside Corned Beef & Co. on Jefferson Street. Or that he had asked the employee, who was taking out some trash, where the nearest gay bar was.

The 17-year-old cook told him of The Park -- a gay and lesbian nightspot at 615 Salem Ave. It was then, police said, that the man opened his coat and showed the teen-ager a pistol. He told the teen he was going to "waste some faggots."

As the man in the trench coat walked off toward Salem Avenue, the cook went inside and called the police. An officer arrived within minutes and quickly broadcast a description of the suspect on his radio.

By that time, the man was probably striding along Salem Avenue, past the Greyhound bus station, under the part of The Roanoke Times building that stretches over the street. Three blocks before The Park, he came upon the Backstreet Cafe, a tiny bar almost hidden among the dingy building facades in the 300 block of Salem Avenue. He stopped a man on his way out the door.

Can I get a beer in there? he asked.

Hearing a yes, the man walked in.

A guy named Chris noticed the man in the trench coat come in, go to the bar and order a beer. The man seemed almost cocky, Chris recalled, and kept to himself as he walked to the table in the corner and sat down. Sitting at the table, he turned away from the group sitting there, leaning his right elbow on the surface while appearing to scan the back of the room.

Patrons later said it seemed like he was casing the joint.

At the table, John Collins wasn't paying much attention to the man, either. After talking with Danny and Gene for a few minutes, he pulled himself to his feet and leaned over to hug Danny. Then everything started to go very wrong.

Gene saw the man stand up and take a step backward. Without a word, his face expressionless, the man pulled a gun from beneath his coat, stretched out his arm and pulled the trigger.

People began to fall.

"I heard Danny go, 'Uhh,’ ” Gene said. "I think he shot him first. He shot John. I fell back off the chair, on the floor. I saw the fire come out of the gun, I heard the bam, bam, bam. I knew I'd be next."

But Gene wasn't next. Maybe the gunman thought Gene had already been hit, because he swung around and fired toward the back of the bar. Calmly, methodically, he continued to fire, shooting five more people.

"When he spun, it made me think of Batman," said Kathy Caldwell, sitting in the chair next to the one vacated by the stranger. "That black trench coat swung around him."

The first bullet struck Danny in the chest. The next hit John in the gut. One tore through Kathy's left palm, coming out above the knuckle on her middle finger and nearly severing it.

A bullet hit Linda Conyers in the right arm and hand. Another struck Page Webb, entering the top left side of her head, coming out her neck and striking her right shoulder. Medics later found another wound on her inner left thigh.

Then the gunman trained his Ruger 9 mm on the booth just behind the table. Hearing the noise, Joel Tucker, sitting with his back to the shooter, had risen from the booth to get away. A bullet hit him in the small of the back. Across the table, still another bullet entered the flesh on Susan Smith's right thigh, exiting through her buttocks and grazing the back of the booth.

Beer bottles smashed on the floor.

Sue Stroud remembers ducking, a bullet whizzing over her head. Across the room, Sue's partner, Anna Sparks, was standing near the pool table when she heard what sounded like balloons popping and turned to take a look. Others later described the sound as firecrackers.

Anna watched the man level his gun on her. She froze.

"He was staring at me like he was saying, 'You are next,’ ” she said.

But the man didn't fire. Instead, he put his hand down, turned on his heel and casually walked out of the bar. John, who had crawled toward the front door, felt the long coat brush across his shoulder. Kathy thought she saw the man take a swig of his beer, but because of the commotion, she's not sure.

Then he was gone.

He had been in Backstreet only about 10 minutes. The shooting took about 20 seconds. Police later found eight shell casings.

After the gunman left, the manager locked the door. Someone called 911. Chris wanted to chase the guy, but the manager wouldn't let him. It wasn't safe. So Chris and other patrons in the bar began tending to the wounded. Victims later called the patrons, especially four women who took charge, angels.

Her left hand throbbing, Kathy felt something cold on her right shoulder. Thinking someone had spilled beer on her, she looked down. Blood seeped through her shirt. A bullet had torn through her shoulder as well.

John, lying on the floor with Danny's arms wrapped around his legs, felt his friend's grip slacken. He knew Danny was gone.

At the police department a few blocks away, it was shift change time. Officers on the midnight shift were clustered outside the building, waiting for the evening shift officers to turn over their cars. But when the shots-fired call came, everyone snapped into gear.

Some officers sprinted in the direction of Backstreet, while others headed toward Corned Beef. One officer sped to The Park to warn the manager there to lock the doors, just in case.

At the rescue squad building at Fourth Street and Day Avenue, Darrell VanNess heard the dispatch call.

VanNess, chief of the volunteer Roanoke Emergency Medical Services, jumped to his feet. Paramedic-trainee Lorrie Camden pushed away the taco salad she had just reheated for the seventh time that day.

The pair, along with two more volunteers, ran to the ambulance.

"They said there were multiple patients," VanNess said. "I looked over at Lorrie and said, 'This is going to be a bad one.’ ”

As the ambulance neared Backstreet, VanNess and Camden noticed police officers creeping toward the bar with their guns drawn. VanNess barely had the vehicle in park before an officer tried to drag him out.

"C'mon! We've got to get inside," VanNess was told.

VanNess was the first rescue worker through the door, followed closely by Capt. Tim McSherry, EMS operations officer for the Roanoke Fire-EMS Department. The first person VanNess saw was John Collins. He had a hole in his belly.

VanNess, an emergency room nurse by trade, quickly surveyed the victims scattered around the room. He checked Danny Overstreet, who had a hole in his chest, wasn't breathing and had no pulse. Then he saw Page Webb. This was the patient he needed to tend to. Now.

Page, her head cradled in a woman's lap while another woman applied pressure to her neck wound, spoke with VanNess as he and Camden secured her to a backboard and readied her to go to the hospital.

Glancing around, VanNess noticed some of the other victims. Linda Conyers was standing near the bar until someone told her to sit down. Susan Smith smoked a cigarette, her beer still in front of her. Pleas for help rang out.

"Over here!"

Camden looked up and saw someone slap Danny across the face, hard. "C'mon," she heard someone say, "I know you're in there."

VanNess heard the jukebox, still cranking out tunes. He can't remember the song. He turned to Camden.

"We have to go," he said firmly.

They whisked Page outside and into the waiting ambulance. "I can't believe this happened to me," she repeated. "It hurts."

A few blocks away, at First Street and Campbell Avenue, Officer Shawn Matthews stopped the bearded man. Ronald Edward Gay didn't put up a fuss. He expected officers would be coming for him, he later told police. That's why he wrapped his pistol in his trench coat, tucking it into a trash can next to the Virginia Museum of Transportation.

Later, sitting in Matthews' police cruiser, Gay made a startling admission. I came from the fag bar, he said, his words caught on videotape. I blew them away.

Inside Backstreet, oblivious to everyone but their patients, rescue workers continued to care for victims. The lack of chaos was surprising. If ever there were people who deserved to panic, it was this bunch, McSherry later said.

One by one, ambulances left for Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital.

"Here's the deal," McSherry barked into his radio to the emergency room. "I got seven shot, one dead. Four critical, two noncritical. Medic One is on his way, will arrive in about five minutes."

Reports of the Backstreet shooting had been crackling across a police scanner in the ER as the scene unfolded just before midnight. But McSherry's broadcast stunned the staff.

Brian Hancock, the charge nurse on duty, put out six gold alerts -- the most critical of calls. He knew he was going to need more than the normal emergency room staff of 13.

He called in two nurses and a secretary from Carilion Roanoke Community Hospital, the flight nurse and a paramedic from Life Guard 10 and two paramedics from the hospital ambulance service. In less than five minutes, 15 extra staffers stood waiting.

Two backup trauma surgeons rushed in from home. Dr. Paul Offermann began to discharge patients to make room for the onslaught.

The emergency room has just two trauma bays reserved for the most serious cases, so doctors devised a plan as they waited for the first ambulance to arrive.

Based on what they were hearing by radio, ER workers split into teams and stood waiting at six different areas. The most serious injuries were taken to the trauma bays; the others went to four acute care rooms.

"For about 15 or 20 minutes it was very loud and very hectic," Hancock said. "But everyone knew where they were supposed to be and what they were supposed to be doing."

Doctors performed emergency surgery on John Collins. The shot to his gut required doctors to open his abdomen, where a bullet had burned a hole through parts of his intestines.

Page Webb, shot in the neck, was sent to the neurotrauma intensive care unit. Other patients wound up in regular beds.

By 4 a.m., the emergency room was quiet. As the first light filled the sky, evidence technicians finished their work in the Backstreet Cafe. Across town, Ronald Gay sat in a cell at the Roanoke City Jail.

Kimberly O'Brien can be reached at 981-3334 or kimo@roanoke.com
Staff writers Zeke Barlow and Laurence Hammack contributed to this story.

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