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The 2010 Appomattox shootings was a spree shooting in Appomattox, Virginia on January 19, 2010.

The incident began when police were called to a road outside Appomattox on a report of a man who required medical attention. When police arrived, they were fired on by the suspect, Christopher Bryan Speight, who also fired on a police helicopter, forcing it to make an emergency landing.

Shortly afterwards, the suspect fled to a wooded area, where a force of more than a hundred police officers surrounded him. No officers were injured in the attacks, though eight civilians were killed, three in a house co-owned by the gunman, four outside the house, and the last on the road.

Police said that the victims were both men and women, and all were previously acquainted with the suspect. No motive was known, and Speight was believed to have acted alone.

He surrendered on January 20 in the same wooded area where he had been surrounded, wearing a bulletproof vest, but without the high-powered rifle believed to be the weapon used. Police put a school and local businesses on lockdown, and advised residents to lock their houses and not go outside. Police were concerned that Speight's house had been rigged with explosives, and a bomb squad was searching the building the morning of the day after the attack, which found explosives both inside and around the building, which were detonated safely.

Speight was employed as a security guard for Old Dominion Security.

On June 24, 2010, Appomattox County Circuit Court Judge Richard Blanton signed an order declaring Speight incompetent to stand trial. He was ordered sent to a state psychiatric hospital until such a time when he is able to assist his attorneys with his defense.

Wikipedia.org

Appomattox murders suspect declared incompetent for trial

By Lynchburg News & Advance

June 29, 2010

APPOMATTOX — The man accused of gunning down eight people at his Spout Spring home in January is not mentally competent to stand trial, a judge has ruled.

Appomattox County Circuit Court Judge Richard Blanton ordered Christopher Speight to be sent a state mental hospital “in an effort to restore him to competency.”

If Speight is declared competent after his treatment, he could stand trial.

Speight, 40, was indicted in April and charged with three counts of capital murder, one count of attempted capital murder of a police officer, four counts of use of a firearm in the commission of a felony and one count of shooting in an occupied dwelling.

The murder counts cover all eight victims — Speight’s sister, Lauralee Sipe; her husband, Dwayne Sipe; her daughter, Morgan Dobyns; their son, Joshua Sipe; and friends, Jonathan Quarles, his wife, Karen Quarles, their daughter, Emily Quarles, and her boyfriend, Ronald “Bo” Scruggs.

Speight was arrested Jan. 20 after an overnight standoff with deputies at 3030 Snapps Mill Road, the home he shared with his sister and her family. Authorities also say Speight shot a Virginia State Police helicopter flying over the scene.

He confessed to the slayings the day after the shootings, according to a search warrant filed in Lynchburg Circuit Court in February.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Darrel Puckett said on Tuesday that Blanton’s ruling was not unexpected. Because the charges carry the possibility of execution, Puckett said, Speight should be treated if there is any doubt about competency.

There is a difference in legal competency needed for Speight to stand trial and outright insanity, he said.

“From the Commonwealth’s standpoint, I do not and will not concede incompetence or insanity,” he said, adding that he expects to continue the prosecution within six months.

For trial purposes, competency generally requires Speight is able to understand the proceedings against him and that he is able to help his lawyers prepare his case.

In his May request for the mental health evaluation, defense lawyer Neil Horn wrote that Speight has appeared gaunt, trembling and had an “overall agitated and fearful demeanor.” Horn wrote that a defense investigator reported during a visit at the Lynchburg Adult Detention Center that Speight told him he was “being tortured by other entities that were battling over him and he demanded the torture stop.” Speight also has described having hallucinations, Horn wrote.

In another sworn statement filed by Horn later in May, he wrote that Speight was still having delusions of being tortured and told him, “the bear sends his regards and says it’s a go.” He wrote that in a May 25 visit with Speight, he could only focus for a few seconds before “beginning detailed delusional statements and narratives.”

“Based on my experience as a trial attorney and specifically as a criminal defense attorney, I am unable at this time to rationally communicate with Mr. Speight regarding his capital murder charges and the other related felony charges,” Horn wrote.

Blanton’s June 24 order sends Speight to Central State Hospital in Petersburg, a state-operated mental health institution. If at any point the staff believes he is competent to stand trial, the order calls for an immediate report to the court. On the other hand, if the staff believes at any time he is likely to remain incompetent “for the foreseeable future,” or if competency has not been restored within six months, the order calls for a report suggesting whether he should be released or committed for a longer time.

Puckett said he expects to see a preliminary report within the next two months and that Speight’s competency will be restored before the six-month period has expired.

*****

1:02 p.m.

APPOMATTOX - A judge has ruled that the man accused of killing eight people in Appomattox County in January is incompetent to stand trial.

Christopher Speight, 40, had been ordered last month to undergo a competency evaluation to determine if he is able to help his two attorneys craft his defense.

In a written ruling signed June 24, Appomattox County Circuit Court Judge Richard Blanton ordered that Speight be sent to a state psychiatric hospital for treatment “in an effort to restore him to competency.”

If Speight is declared competent after his treatment, he could stand trial.

Speight was indicted in April and charged with three counts of capital murder, one count of attempted capital murder, four counts of use of a firearm in the commission of a murder and one count of shooting in an occupied structure.

The murder counts cover all eight victims — Speight’s sister, Lauralee Sipe; her husband, Dwayne Sipe; her daughter, Morgan Dobyns; their son, Joshua Sipe; and friends, Jonathan Quarles, his wife, Karen Quarles, their daughter, Emily Quarles, and her boyfriend, Ronald “Bo” Scruggs.

Speight was arrested Jan. 20 after an overnight standoff with deputies at 3030 Snapps Mill Road, the home he shared with his sister and her family.

Man Surrenders in Virginia Killings

By Ian Urbina and Theo Emery - The New York Times

January 20, 2010

Just days before Christopher B. Speight surrendered to the police in connection with the killings of eight people in Appomattox County, Va., on Tuesday, co-workers said they had noticed that he had seemed sullen and on edge when he showed up for his job as a security guard at a small grocery store.

Mr. Speight, 39, had been distant since his mother died of cancer in 2006, they said, but in recent months he was increasingly angry with family members who he believed were trying to steal the farmhouse that his mother had bequeathed to him.

“On Saturday, he was here, and he wouldn’t come inside. He wouldn’t talk to anybody,” said Tonya Maddox, a cashier at the store. “We joked that he was going to shoot someone.”

And, according to the police, that is what he did. All of those he killed were either family members or friends of the family, the police said.

After shooting the eight, they said, Mr. Speight fired at arriving officers and forced a police helicopter to land after hitting it with at least four rounds from a high-powered rifle. A 20-hour standoff ended Wednesday morning when Mr. Speight, unarmed and wearing a bulletproof vest, emerged from hiding in a thick wooded patch near his farm.

The police said they had charged Mr. Speight with first-degree murder and other charges might follow as their investigation proceeds.

Late Wednesday, the police identified the eight victims, who included Lauralee Sipe, 38, Mr. Speight’s sister, with whom he lived; her daughter, Morgan L. Dobyns, 15; Ms. Sipe’s husband, Dwayne S. Sipe, 38; and the couple’s son, Joshua Sipe, 4. Other victims were Jonathan L. Quarles, 43, of Appomattox; his wife, Karen Quarles, 43, of Appomattox; their daughter, Emily A. Quarles, 15, of Appomattox; and Ronald I. Scruggs II, 16, of Dillwyn, Va.

At the brown colonial-style house, where most of the bodies were found, the only sign of the violence that took place was yellow crime-scene tape stretched across a neatly landscaped front yard and evidence flags in the nearby woods.

A child’s bike and a portable basketball hoop lay near the front door, indicators of life interrupted.

The county’s four schools were closed Wednesday, but school officials said classes would resume Thursday. The police called in the bomb squad to search in and around Mr. Speight’s house, fearing it might be rigged with explosives. Officers could be heard detonating explosives they had found at the house.

Mr. Speight’s neighbor Tammy Randolph said she was glad there were not more casualties.

On Tuesday, Ms. Randolph said she had been driving home with her mother and her 6-month-old son when she noticed the body of a man soaked in blood lying face-down in the road.

“I knew something was really strange,” said Ms. Randolph, 29, adding that after finding the first body, she tried to run to Mr. Speight’s house to call for help but turned back when she came across a second bloodied body in the road.

Roger Harris, 36, a mechanic and farmer who works on the property adjacent to Mr. Speight’s, said he was accustomed to hearing guns. Mr. Speight often liked to engage in target practice at night, Mr. Harris said.

But Mr. Harris said he was stunned Tuesday afternoon when dozens of police cars, sirens blaring, stopped at the woods nearby and a police helicopter hovered overhead. This time the gunfire seemed to be directed at the police.

“He was right over that tree line,” Mr. Harris said of the gunman. “That’s where he was shooting. He knew what he was doing.”

Told by the police to stay in his home, Mr. Harris crouched near his back window and watched as four shots hit the helicopter, which made an emergency landing in his field.

A relative of Mr. Speight’s who answered the phone at the home of Mr. Speight’s uncle Jack Giglio said she was sickened by the news. She said Mr. Speight had last been seen by many members of the family at his mother’s funeral. Co-workers said Mr. Speight was a devout Jehovah’s Witness.

“We’re really upset by this, but we didn’t know him well,” said the woman, who declined to give her name.