Published: May 08, 2008 11:24 pm      

Investigators comb forest for evidence in double shooting

PEARISBURG, Va. — Investigators with the Giles County Sheriff’s Office continued to scour the Jefferson National Forest Thursday for evidence related to a double shooting that occurred Tuesday evening at the Walnut Flats picnic/camp site in the Dismal area near the Giles/Bland county border.

“The investigation is on-going,” Investigator Ron Hamlin of the Giles County Sheriff’s Office said. “We were out there all day (Thursday) and we’ll be out there again (today). We have a suspect in the case, but he hasn’t been charged yet. He is still in the hospital where he was transported after the accident.”

Randall Lee Smith, 54, of Pearisburg, was identified Tuesday night as a possible suspect in the shooting of two Tazewell County, Va., men, Scott Johnson of Bluefield, Va., and Sean Farmer of Tazewell, Va. who were camping at Walnut Flats. Hamlin said both shooting victims remained hospitalized Thursday. “I heard a report that one of them may have been released, but I don’t know that to be the case,” Hamlin said. The ages of the two victims were not available.

After authorities learned of the shootings, emergency dispatchers broadcast a “Be On the Look Out” for a 2000 Ford Ranger pickup truck. A Virginia state trooper spotted a vehicle that fit the description of the suspect vehicle, and pulled on Sugar Run Road behind the pickup truck, according to Sgt. Michael T. Conroy, spokesman for the Wythe County, Va., based Division IV of the Virginia State Police.

Conroy said that Smith ran off the road and flipped the vehicle before the trooper turned his lights on to get him to pull over and stop. A trooper found a gun at the scene of the accident.

Bland Sheriff Jerry Thompson said he received a report from Giles County officials last weekend that Smith was “missing,” which prompted him (Thompson) to do some on-line research on Smith and an earlier case. He said that Smith had pleaded guilty to the 1981 murders of two hikers on the Appalachian Trail.

Thompson, a former Virginia state trooper, did not investigate the May 1981 murders of Laura Susan Ramsay, 27, and Robert Mountford, 27, both of Maine, but when he was called out Tuesday night to investigate the incident, authorities weren’t sure if the shootings took place in Giles or Bland county. Thompson said he immediately thought of the 1981 incident.

“It happened in about that same area,” he said.

– Contact Bill Archer at barcher@bdtonline.com