VA: Woman Kills Another Woman, Then Herself...
Slimpickins
Slim
Deaths remain puzzling
Suicide followed slaying at restaurant
BY JAMIE C. RUFF
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Apr 13, 2001
SOUTH HILL - When pursuing deputies saw Sylvia Oliver Manning raise her gun
as she raced through Dinwiddie County at about 80 miles per hour Wednesday,
they feared a shootout.
Instead the Denny's employee, who police said had gunned down a co-worker at
the South Hill restaurant less than an hour earlier, pointed the gun at her
head and shot herself. Manning, 36, was taken to Southside Regional Medical
Center in Petersburg and then transferred to Virginia Commonwealth
University's Medical College of Virginia Hospitals in Richmond, where she
died about 4 a.m. yesterday.
Shortly before noon Wednesday, police said, Manning had walked into the
restaurant and fired one shot from a .380-caliber automatic handgun at the
head of Barbie Lalita Feggins, 25, as she stood in the waitress work area
entering an order into the computer. Feggins died at the scene.
Manning then left the restaurant, got into her car parked behind the
building and drove off before police got there.
The slaying was South Hill's first since 1990, when an argument at a
fast-food restaurant led to a shooting.
The bodies of Manning, who lived in Lunenburg County, and Feggins, of South
Hill, have been turned over to the medical examiner's office in Richmond for
autopsies.
Yesterday, South Hill police were still investigating but were no closer to
knowing what prompted the slaying than they were the day before.
"Nothing to determine why she was going to do it," Police Chief Norman
Hudson said yesterday.
Investigators have checked several leads but have found nothing to indicate
a possible motive. Hudson said officers have spoken only briefly with the
families of the women and will probably not interview them until next week.
"They've got to have time to grieve and get over it before you start asking
these types of personal questions," Hudson said.
Manning had called her brother before the shooting and told him she loved
him and her other sister, but "she didn't indicate she was going to do
something like that," Hudson said.
Hudson said Manning bought the gun used in the shooting two weeks ago at a
local pawnshop.
Emmett Williams, one of the restaurant's owners, said Manning and Feggins
were both good employees, and there appeared to be no conflict between them.
"Nothing was evident to us," Williams said. "We wouldn't have tolerated that
kind of thing. It [is] evident there was some friction somewhere."
Yesterday afternoon, Williams met with the restaurant's employees before
reopening.
"We're just very sorry about what happened here," he said. "I have some
really good people who work for me. It's a very good group of people."
Williams said Feggins had been at the restaurant near Interstate 85 for
about five years, working as a waitress and occasionally as a hostess.
Manning had worked there for about a year and set up the continental
breakfast for the hotel connected to the restaurant and worked in the
kitchen.
A psychologist was called in to counsel the employees, Williams said. At the
time of the shooting, another restaurant employee was standing beside
Feggins, Williams said.
Williams said he also hopes to set up an education fund for Manning's four
children and Feggins' three children.
"We've got to treat both sides," he said. "It's not about taking sides."
Minutes after the shooting, off-duty Alberta Police officer Renee Hill said
he saw two women pumping gas as he pulled into an Alberta convenience store.
As Hill walked into the store, one woman, apparently Manning, spoke to him.
The other woman followed Hill into the store and said she thought the woman
pumping gas had shot someone at Denny's.
Hill, who was wearing a police T-shirt and driving a squad car, said he
called for assistance and began following the woman.
Meanwhile, as police officers fanned out in search of Manning, a secretary
for the local state police office on her way to lunch spotted Manning's car
and reported it, Hudson said.
Manning, driving up to 80 mph, headed north on U.S. 1 into Dinwiddie County,
where other officers picked up the pursuit. At 12:30 p.m., just outside the
town of McKenney, officers turned on their patrol car lights and tried to
get Manning to pull over. It was then that she shot herself.
When Manning shot herself, her foot pressed onto the brake and the car came
to a stop in the middle of the road, Hudson said. When the car door was
opened, the gun fell onto the road, he said.
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Maggie
>
>Slim
***It's strange that the article mentioned nothing about the women's private
lives. Ten to one, there's a man involved.
Maggie
"Many students react to ideas they don´t like as though they were apprentice
members of the Chinese Politburo."--Nat Hentoff on reactions to David
Horowitz's Ad Opposing Slave Reparations
PattyC
Especially if you are not so "together" in the first place...AND, there have
been other work shootings where one person was targeted.
PattyC
Maggie <maggi...@aol.comSPAMBLOC> wrote in message
news:20010413140607...@ng-md1.aol.com...
Free Bird
wrote:
> >***This is sad twist.
> >
> >Slim
> ***It's strange that the article mentioned nothing about the women's private
> lives. Ten to one, there's a man involved.
Or another woman.