Page 10/The Battalion/Monday, April 16, 1984
Sniper who killed two
kept arsenal In his home
R.I.
by Paul Din
Ch
United Press International
NORFOLK, Va. — Friends
of a gun enthusiast who shot to
death a woman and a police of
ficer before dying in a shootout
with police described the man
as paranoid and troubled by
“voices,” a published report said
Sunday.
Nathanial Robertson, a com
puter technician who had a his
tory of mental problems, was
killed by police at the end of an
eight-hour standoff Saturday
when he charged out of his
house heavily armed and fired
at officers, who had lobbed tear
gas into the house.
“He was always calling here
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and asking if we heard the
voices in his back yard,” Shirley
Hues, Robertson’s next-door
neighbor in the city’s Norview
section, told The Virginian-Pi
lot and The Ledger Star.
She said he kept a virtual ar
senal of guns in his small home.
“He loved guns,” said Hues,
to whom Robertson had shown
his gun collection at least once.
“His ex-wife said he had 22
guns, and one of them was a
machine gun.”
Robertson, she said, kept a
gun in every room of his house.
The siege began shortly after
midnight Friday when Rob
ertson fatally shot Diane Lam-
bino, 25, a mother of two from
Virginia Beach who was eight
months pregnant, as she sat in a
car in front of his house.
When police were sum
moned, Robertson, 39, killed
officer Douglas Drye, 26, with a
single shot to the chest from a
high-powered scope rifle.
Police cordoned off the area
during the ensuing standoff
and evacuated residents of
nearby homes. Efforts by his
family and friends to persuade
him to give up were unsuccess
ful. Police said Robertson fired
at them all night.
Carolyn Nichols, with whom
Robertson had lived for about
eight years, and Hues, said Rob
ertson had been suffering from
severe bouts of paranoia last
week.
Nichols said Robertson had
locked her and their two young
children in a bathroom twice
last week. “He had kept them in
there for three or four hours
each time and had said he did it
because people were trying to
hurt him,” Hues said.
Nichols said she tried to get
help for Robertson Friday from
a public mental health pro
gram. She said a staff member
of Norfolk’s Community Men
tal Health Services who had
talked to Robertson by tele
phone later told her that the
agency could not help him be
cause Robertson did not sound
dangerous.
I hey said they could not do
nothing. I hey said he seemed
all right,” she said. “How could
they know over the phone?”
Fhe emergency services unit
of the mental health agency
ni'h wh’S contl ™ Saturday
mglit whether thev had t .it i
with Robertson Y ' ld,ked
//^y m gomaja go talk.
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Suicide
'Golden Boy tokes his life — reason unknown
Unit
United Press International
TUCLIMCARI, N . M . —
Northwest of 4,957-foot Tu-
cumcari Mountain, and a few
hundred yards from the fast
track of Interstate 40, teenager
Rod David took a 20-gauge
shotgun and inexplicably gave
up on life.
Teenage suicides, however
tragic, occur with alarming fre
quency in many of the nation’s
towns and cities.
Even in Tucumcari, a town of
motels, restaurants and gas sta
tions strung along old U.S. 66
on New Mexico’s windswept
eastern plains, teenage suicide
like David’s a week ago was not
u n precedented.
A few months back, for in
stance, another student at the
high school had killed himself.
But, says Anthony Sweeney, the
school’s principal the past four
years, that young man was not
Rod David, the “Golden Boy,”
the kid they called “Rock.”
“It was a student who moved
in from out of town. He had
moved here and only been here
a couple of months,” recalled
Sweeney.
By contrast, the blond, 6-3,
205-pound David, born 18
years ago in Holdrege, Neb.,
was a modern-day Adonis, a
scholar-athlete who would have
gotten most of the attention at
any high school.
In the working class commu
wf 1 . 1 'n da ^ rdl y 8,000, in a town without
a college, David’s heroics on the
football field, the basketball
r*
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court and the track approached
mythic proportions.
His coaches found it difficult
sometimes to agree about where
the boy with the easy smile
could best showcase his talents.
For now. Rod had chosen the
football field. He planned to en
roll at Texas Tech in the fall on
a full athletic scholarship.
His older brother, Stan, had
been one of the top players on
the 1983 Red Raider team. An
other brother, Mick, was a
player at South Dakota. The
David boys had always made
their mark at Tucumcari High
School.
An all-stater in three sports.
Rod David had done nothing to
denigrate the family name in
Tucumcari. If anything, he may
have been the family’s star of
stars.
Two days before he stuck a
shotgun up close to his chest
and pulled the trigger, the qui
escent, “gentle giant” helped his
teammates win the Rattler Re
lays by taking home three firsts
and a second.
Four days after his success at
the track meet, 1,500 people —
toddlers, students, business
men, housewives, ranchers and
grandmothers — were jammed
into somber old Rattler Gymna
sium to sing hymns and pay
homage to the young man
whose body lay inside a golden
casket.
They sat numbly, staring at
the gleaming metal coffin in
front of the basketball rosier on
the wall that still bore David’s
name and his number — 34.
That number and the 15 he
wore in football were retired
that day.
The mourners felt their
wrenching loss separately and
collectively as Van Pryor, Da
vid’s rugged looking football
coach, struggled vainly durin
his eulogy to ward off mounting
grief.
“Those of us that knew hiti
for only a short period of timt
are richer for it,” Pryor said
choking back sobs.
“If the human spirit can lx
compared to a cloth, and each
of us is a thread in the tapestn
of life, then, undoubtedly, those
threads that belonged to Roil
David are golden,” he said.
I Ith Street home(
| COLl
Idsiigau
lay h
Rider’s
iv use
“ 1 loine of a Rai
is near that sign
H s P re
led in
^Rar the
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IWlldt
Unit
Four clays after his
success at the track
nicely 1,500 people —
toddlers, students,
businessmen, house
wives, ranchers and
grandmothers — n ere
jammed into somber
old Rattler Gymna
sium to sing hymns
and pay homage to the
young man whose
body lay inside a
golden casket.
S( Hit ll
Sllliplv,
It w;
water
found the youth s Jifelt " ferdiac
|tist beloie 2 p.m.lastMoflM u ltar
\ leu weeks earlier.asM m hjv
of his Fellowship of (lit Liver d
Athletes activities, the bR
some teenager had tolkcldf
nations that would he
pa\ the heating hills ofj
the town’s (lisadvantai'etll
dei Iv.
“ 1 here was so nuicHfflO
ibis iban Rod heittj
athlete," principal Sv
last week. “You’d j
have seen it to he he \ e it. HL0S
Iaacp
At week s end, noonejiRree-dc
cominunitv had a sati'fuR' 5 ‘ ia
explanation lot why die J s ('* 00<
teenager had killed himself* diff
Most ol the spedilatioo®” mui
leied on pressure—thenetjR^'
sin « re< I. ihe expectations,olE“Weh
ati\e> and peers, the reWRssions
dun to .u hieve still moreilRntinut
noi squabble v ith hi- . Ia.il Mu;
an .u < unutlalion otthitiM the
one really kne« lain, al
Rabl), spoils edilffRg with
j i.ipei. said, H 1 Resider
die pressure on biRyorl
ear-old “ '
But in
Boots
te loca
U times
lost 18-
A member of his high
school’s Honor Society since his
freshman year, David was
known for his selflessness off
the athletic field.
Despite his formidable ath
letic achievements, the squat,
hand-letter sign outside his
Red-eyed Sisto Garcia,
son. I ommy, had been •
David's teammates sine
eighth grade, stood\\\iM
wind Wednesday otiisiil
gymnasium, as thronf
mom net s filed past'tin’
casket in the foyer. ’J
With his wife al hissidi
i ia w.isn't looking for anfl®
lai explanations for the M
ager’s death.
a t m
1 Worker
killed
by crate
Walk, Cycle, or Shuttle.
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Burden
••l-year-'
"We’r
'ea we
Bob
i B H ‘ g
Unilrd Press International By.
A US I IN — An Austin ml.“ The >
who was reluctantly worh 1 * 15 {,, ’f
overtime on his I hn "•‘"i'lif™' 11
anniversary was killed mr'i st
i -b^Rirn sau
weekend .ii c \ constructlOflW^
in downtown Austin. - e
Juan Ramon Alcoser,30,R Vlcls
pronounced dead SaturdayR
Brack' midge Hospital altmRjBH
crate broke loose troru ;m
head cable and fell on liitii.
“He wasn't scheduled
work, but they called himina|
he haled to tell them no,
Alcoser s wife Gloria, ;37, 4
had planned a special roast!
dinner for their anniversary
“1 le never missed achantf
work extra when he could,”|
said. “Now I wish I had (alb
him out of going
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Phi Sigma
National BiologicalTionor Society
Beta Rho Chapter
Will be forced to go inactive
status unless:
A faculty advisor plus 4 student
officers are found by April 30, 1984.
Members desiring to fill these positions
should call:
Dr. Gwen Elissalde 845-9185
or Blair Brenner 845-8429
s
Roll i
before April 30, 1984
Chicken ’n rolls