Animal cruelty
Colonial Heights, VA (US)Date: Jan 2001
Disposition: Dismissed
Person of Interest: Bruce Thompson
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When someone tried to break through his front door Sunday morning, a local homeowner put his body against it to keep the intruder outside.
He had no idea who was on the other side.
"We didn't know he was a suspect in a homicide," said the homeowner, who asked not to be identified because of fear for his family's safety.
Pounding and kicking at the door was Bruce Thompson, a man Colonial Heights police said had just killed his parents and grandmother with a rifle at their Charles Avenue home. Minutes later, police shot the 43-year-old Thompson dead.
Neighbors identified Thompson's victims as retired school principal and former School Board member Glen E. Thompson, 76; his wife, Ruth Thompson, 76; and her mother, Mollie McClain King, 97, whom folks simply knew as "Grandma King."
Shots were fired about 8 a.m. They were first reported to police by a city sheriff's deputy who lives across the street from the Thompsons in the 600 block of Charles Avenue.
After the shooting, Thompson jumped in his truck and drove about 3 miles north to the city's affluent Conjurer's Neck subdivision.
He found a new home on Lakewater Court that appeared vacant, its elevated and hilly yard still muddy, its driveway nonexistent.
A woman, however, was in- side making coffee while her husband and 7-month-old son rested on the couch. The couple's other two children, a 6-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son, were spending the night at their grandparents' house.
The family had been living in there since September, the homeowner said.
When Thompson began trying to break through the door, the owner braced himself against the other side. He said Thompson didn't speak throughout the confrontation.
The heavy-set Thompson eventually gave up and ran to his truck and drove off. The homeowner grabbed a pistol and jumped in the family minivan to follow Thompson and try to get a license-plate number.
The homeowner had called police at 8:44 a.m., but Thompson pulled away before they got to the residence.
Thompson rolled slowly down the road, said the homeowner, who wrote down the license-plate number. Thompson then turned his truck around and tried to ram the owner, who pulled to the side of the road. Thompson pulled back to the front of the home.
"That's when I got worried, because he was between me and my family," the homeowner said. So he drove quickly around Thompson and raced back inside to his family.
With his wife and infant son on a bed in a back room of the home, the owner stayed near the front of the house, where he watched Virginia State Police and Colonial Heights officers arrive. Thompson sat silently in the driver's seat of his truck.
The homeowner and Lt. Jeffrey W. Faries of the Colonial Heights police said officers used a bullhorn to repeatedly warn Thompson to get out of the truck and drop his weapon. After a 30-minute standoff with police in front of the Lakewater Court home, Thompson turned his truck around and drove slowly toward the police barricade, the homeowner said.
He said there was a single gunshot and then a second later a hail of gunfire from assault-style weapons for about 15 seconds.
Four bullets drilled through a front window of the family home. The homeowner said his wife and son took cover on the floor when the shooting began.
About 10 bullets went through the roof of the home, piercing an upstairs bathtub four times and striking a heating unit on the second floor. Sheetrock upstairs was also filled with bullet holes, the owner said.
The driver's side and rear windows if his truck were shot out, and the toolbox and tailgate were hit.
Twenty to 30 bullets may have entered the home, the owner said.
Meanwhile, about 9:30 a.m., Thompson lay dead in his truck, roughly 40 feet from the front door.
The homeowner immediately recognized Thompson once police gave him the name.
Bruce Thompson graduated from Colonial Heights High School in 1979, a year after the homeowner, but the two did not have any ties. He believes it was a coincidence that Thompson showed up at the home.
Thompson's brother, Jeffrey Thompson, lives near the homeowner in the 100 block of Comstock Drive in Conjurer's Neck. He was unavailable for comment.
Sgt. Kevin A. Barrick of the Virginia State Police said comments about the shooting and use of force will not be made until a news conference today at 2:30 p.m. at the Virginia State Police Headquarters on Midlothian Turnpike.
Faries, with the Colonial Heights police, also would not comment on the events.
Six state police officers and one Colonial Heights officer involved in the shooting are on paid administrative leave. Police officials said Sunday that compensation will be given to the family for damage to the home.
"I really hate to criticize the police," the homeowner said, adding that he does not blame the officers for their use of force. "My family is safe and that's the bottom line."
But his sister is curious about the use of force by police.
"I think what bothers me is that somebody could have gotten killed," she said, "and that 'somebody' would be a family member of mine. That's very unnerving." She also lives nearby in Conjurer's Neck.
The sister, neighbors of the Thompsons on Charles Avenue, and others in Conjurer's Neck have raised questions as to how bullets hit the home, built on a small hill and raised from the road, where Thompson was killed.
The home is about 3 miles from the Thompson home on Charles Avenue. Bruce Thompson lived in the basement, neighbors and police said. His room was dark yesterday, visible only through the light filtering through numerous Confederate flags hung in the cellar's tiny windows.
Thompson mowed grass part-time in the neighborhood, but neighbors said he had no other job.
He had a court record that included cruelty to animals and two curse-and-abuse charges.
A warrant for his arrest in 2001 did not specify how he allegedly abused animals but stated that he attempted to "cruelly or unnecessarily beat, maim, mutilate, or kill an animal."
Court papers from the Colonial Heights General District Court show that the accuser in the curse-and-abuse and animal-abuse cases was the same person. Papers also show the language Thompson allegedly used against a relative of the accuser was "reasonably calculated to provoke a breach of the peace."
The cases were dismissed.
Another Conjurer's Neck resident, Alfred O'Daire, graduated from Colonial Heights High in 1974 with Bruce Thompson's older brother, Jeffrey.
He lives a few houses from his former classmate in the upscale neighborhood in the north side of the city, a few blocks from where police shot Thompson.
"I was just blown away when I heard what happened," O'Daire said. "I didn't even know [Jeffrey] had a brother."
O'Daire said he wasn't close to the Thompson family but knew Glen Thompson to be a good man.
"He was just one of those kinds of people that makes situations like this very surprising when it happens to them," O'Daire said.
Glen Thompson served on the School Board from 1994 to 1998. The retired Air Force lieutenant colonel worked with the Air Force Association to bring in thousands of dollars in education opportunities for the city's students.
"He was a very, very caring individual," said William C. Reade, a 24-year veteran of the School Board.
Reade said Glen Thompson was known for his commitment to vocational education within the school system. "He felt we weren't doing enough in that area and he always pushed very hard to get things done."
Glen Thompson's wife, Ruth, taught sewing classes at night in Colonial Heights.
"She was an exceptional seamstress," said Betsy Gentry Luck, a member of the City Council who is friends with the family. She is campaigning for a second term in council. "They recently brought Grandma King in to live with them because she needed extra help. They're going to be sorely missed."
Luck's green campaign posters are strewn across the backseat of the Thompsons' station wagon, still parked in the carport of their home. References« Back to Search Results
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