Published: June 14, 2008 08:20 pm            

Survivors’ story:

BLUEFIELD, Va. — When he woke up in the neurotrauma intensive care unit of Roanoke Memorial Hospital with a ventilator doing the work of his two lungs, Scott Johnston wondered to himself why Randall Lee Smith had chosen him and his buddy, Sean Farmer as targets in an attempted double homicide in the Dismal area of Giles County, Va., on the Appalachian Trail.

“I remembered seeing two female hikers walking the trail earlier that day,” Johnston said afternoon during an interview Wednesday afternoon at his family’s home in Bluefield, Va. “Surely, he saw them too. You would think he would pick them, and not us — two pretty good-sized men. Maybe he approached them, and maybe they picked up on a vibe that I just didn’t pick up on. It just didn’t make sense.”

Johnston, 33, has not yet grown weary of telling the story, although Farmer, also 33, of nearby Springville, Va., understandably, has. After extended hospital stays recovering from the gunshot wounds — two each — they received at about 8:30 p.m., Tuesday, May 6, interviews with Giles County Investigators Lt. Ron Hamblin, Mark Skidmore and others, as well as two long interviews with reporters and photographers from both the Washington Post and the Richmond Times, the story is getting increasingly more difficult to recount.

“Sean and I have known each other for 25 years or more. Really, since we were kids,” Johnston said. “We both love fishing, hunting, camping and doing anything outdoors. We decided that we were going to go fishing together that week, but Sean had to work Monday, so I went up there by myself. Sean had been living out of the area for a while, but came back to help with his family and got a job driving coal truck ... a good job.”

On Monday afternoon, Johnston went to a clearing on the trail known locally as Walnut Flats, set up his camp and got an early start fishing Tuesday morning. He’s a fly fisherman, and by early afternoon, he had already caught his limit of trout and decided to drive to Trent’s Grocery store to see if Farmer had stopped there on his way to the camp.

“Sean knows where I camp,” Johnston said. “I always camp in the same spot.” Walnut Flats is used for camping and picnicking by trail walkers as well as visitors and local residents.

Farmer was not at the grocery store, so Johnston returned to his camp to wait. On a little road not far from his camp, he had to stop when a dog popped out of the brush and stopped in the middle of the road.

“A fellow came out of the brush right from where the dog came out,” Johnston said. “He asked me if it was my dog. I told him it wasn’t, but I felt kind of sorry for him. He told me he had been fishing too, but that he hadn’t had any luck. I gave him a few of the fish that I caught and went back fishing again. I know it isn’t right — that I had already caught my limit — but I was trying to catch enough fish so Sean and I would have something to eat that night.” That was about 1 p.m., Tuesday.

Johnston was successful again and caught enough trout for supper. Farmer arrived at about the same time as Johnston came back from fishing — sometime between 3 and 4 p.m. While Farmer set up his camp, Johnston built a nice campfire, cleaned the fish and started cooking. Smith and the dog came strolling past the camp, and the two Tazewell County men invited him to join them for supper.

“He told us his name was Ricky Williams like the football player,” Johnston said. “The guy claimed that he was an engineering graduate from Virginia Tech and that he was retired from Lockheed-Martin as an engineer and that he had been out camping for about two weeks.”

“You know what they call him in Pearisburg?” Johnston’s father, Beaman Johnston injected. “He goes by the initials L.R., and that stands for Lyin’ Randall. He never told the truth. He was always lying.”

“I really just felt sorry for him, I guess,” Johnston said. “He didn’t look like he’d eaten very well for a while, and he really loved the fire. He kept coming back to the fire time and time again, warming his hands, and turning around to warm his back. He looked sort of pitiful.”

About a half-hour into the interview, Johnston’s mother, Thelma Johnston, had to leave the house to help Randy and Nancy Lamb prepare for this year’s Young People’s Recital of the Bluefield Dance Theatre. Thelma Johnston has been a pillar of strength for young dancers of the area and their families for at least a quarter of a century.

After they ate the trout, the three men sat around the campfire and talked about sports and other things. Finally, at about 8:30 p.m., Smith stood up, announced that it was time for him to return to his camp and called for his dog. Johnston would later find out that the dog’s name was “Bo,” and that Smith’s Pearisburg neighbors had given the dog to him to keep him company. Smith lived with his mother who died about eight years ago.

“That was the first time I got any kind of a bad vibe at all,” Johnston said. “He had told us that his camp was about an hour away, and he just didn’t seem to be the kind of person who could walk through the woods after dark. I do it, and in fact, I enjoy walking through the woods at night some times, but he just didn’t seem to be the kind of person who could find his way to a camp that was an hour away through the forest in total darkness.”

Johnston’s vibe proved immediately prophetic. “He hollered for the dog, walked behind Sean and fired two shots,” Johnston said. Smith, 54, then aimed the .22-caliber pistol in Johnston’s direction. “I tried to get to a little clump of trees near my camp and all I heard was the boom from the gun,” Johnston said. “I didn’t even realize I was shot until I heard the blood squirting from my neck out on the leaves.”

Johnston described how he placed the index finger of his right hand on the neck wound to stop the bleeding. Surgeons in Roanoke, Va., removed one of the bullets from each of the young men, but each still has one bullet in them. The bullet in Farmer is near his eye. “The doctors told him it might come out through his nose on its own,” Johnston said. The bullet in Johnston is still in his back. “The doctor told me he can take it out any time, like it was day surgery,” he said. “I’m not ready for any surgery at all right now.”

Johnston was less than 10 feet away from Smith when he opened fire, but Farmer used that brief moment of distraction to get to his pickup truck. “I saw him get in the driver’s seat, and I ran to the passenger side,” Johnston said. “The guy walked over to the window of the pickup truck, aimed the gun at Sean and pulled the trigger,” Johnston said. “The gun mis-fired, and we got out of there.”

“It was old ammunition,” Beaman Johnston said. “It was one of those old rim-fire .22s. They’re bad for mis-firing. It might have been the same ammunition and the same gun he used to kill those other two hikers on the Appalachian Trail back in 1981.”

“We don’t know that, dad,” Johnston said, correcting his father. “The detectives are still investigating.”

Smith pleaded guilty in 1984 to second-degree murder in connection with the May 1981 murders of two Appalachian Trail hikers, Laura Susan Ramsay and Robert Mountford, both 27, and both from the state of Maine. Smith served his 10-year prison sentence, was released in 1996, and returned home to live with his mother, Virginia Smith, who died in 2000.

Farmer and Johnston sped down the road from Walnut Flats in search of help. “I knew that the guy probably took my truck,” Johnston said. “I left the keys in the ignition from where we had been listening to the radio.” But at the moment, his truck was the least of his concerns.

“Sean started blacking out from where he was loosing all of that blood,” Johnston said. “He was going into shock, started falling over and began losing control of the truck, so I reached out with my left hand and grabbed the steering wheel. We finally got into some houses about five miles away from the camp, and I turned into the Millers’ house. I didn’t know them before. I just felt it was the house we should stop at.” Again, Johnston’s premonition was accurate.

“I asked them to call for help and told them we had been shot,” Johnston said. “That’s right there on the border of Giles and Bland counties, so both sheriffs’ departments responded. In the meantime, some of the Millers’ neighbors went to Trent’s Grocery to get a poster they had seen there for a missing person — Smith.

“It took about a half-hour for the Rescue Squad to get there, but in that time, I was able to identify the man in the poster as being the man who shot us, and give them a description of my pickup truck,” Johnston said. “I knew he stole it. The keys were in the ignition.

“He must have been driving real fast on those roads, because the state trooper spotted him all the way up on Sugar Run Road in Giles County like he was headed back to Pearisburg,” Johnston said. “I know the roads up in there and there’s no way I could have driven all the way up there that fast.

“The trooper who pulled out behind him said that he drove up an embankment intentionally like he wanted to wreck my truck,” Johnston said. “If you see pictures of the truck, it’s a wonder how anyone could survive that wreck, but he did, and so did his dog. His neighbors up in Pearisburg got the dog out of the pound after the guy died.” After spending several days in the hospital, Smith was found unresponsive in his cell at New River Regional Jail at 5 p.m., May 10 and pronounced dead at Pulaski Community Hospital an hour later. Authorities are still awaiting results of his autopsy.

“The paramedics stopped the bleeding and took us to a helicopter to transport us to Roanoke,” Johnston said. “They loaded me, but they couldn’t get Sean in the helicopter. He’s big — 6’6” and 400 pounds. They just couldn’t get his shoulders through the helicopter door so they transported him to Wytheville Community Hospital where they got him on another helicopter with bigger doors.

“I wasn’t sure if I was going to live or not,” Johnston said. His dad put his hands together as if he was in prayer, pointed skyward, looked up and nodded his head. He didn’t say a word.

“I couldn’t move or talk,” Scott Johnston said. “My mind was the only thing working right there. When we landed, I could feel cold air as it came across my body, but I couldn’t move. I remember seeing a big light as they took me into the operating room, but I can’t remember anything else until I came to the next afternoon in the neurotrauma intensive care unit.”

Johnston spent two and one-half days in the neurotrauma intensive care unit as well as an additional four days in the hospital where he recovered from surgery that required 27 staples to put close the V-shaped opening around his neck. “The doctors and nurses there were outstanding,” he said. “They told me I would be in the hospital for three weeks, but I was up walking on the same day they took me off the ventilator.

“They were all amazed at the progress I made, but I’ve always tried to keep in shape and take good care of myself,” he said. “They weren’t even sure if I would be able to talk or swallow again. I feel like I’m doing pretty well. I know I’ve still got that bullet in my back. I feel it every day. I don’t have any feeling in the skin of my throat, one of my eyes hasn’t quite come back in place and I’m too stiff to move my neck, but I’m getting better every day.”

Johnston graduated from Graham High School in 1987 and moved to Virginia’s eastern shore where his father was finishing out his teaching obligations at Virginia’s Eastern Shore Community College in Melfa. He returned home and started working as a ceramic tile contractor, but also continued to pursue his passion for the outdoors — a passion he does not intend to abandon because of his encounter with Smith.

“I get a little paranoid in crowds, when I hear loud noises or if anyone comes up at me from behind without me knowing they’re there, but I don’t think this will stop me from fishing, camping and walking in the woods,” he said. “I’ve known that kind of life since I was 12 or 13 years old, and I don’t think this will change any of that.”

Smith totaled Johnston’s 2000 Ford Ranger pickup truck with a little more than 20,000 miles on it and in pristine condition. “I kept it nice,” Johnston said of his truck. Johnston said the Giles investigators were sensitive to retrieving his gear from the camp site as well as from the wreckage of the truck. “I got everything back except my favorite fly rod, a fly rod I had for at least 25 years,” Johnston said.

“I know the hospital bills are going to be big, but the Giles investigators put me in contact with people from the Virginia crime victims office who have been helpful,” he said. “I know I can make it. This just adds to the stories of my life.”

In the days since he was released from the hospital, Johnston went to Pearisburg to talk with some of Smith’s neighbors — many of whom expressed to him that they were afraid he would do something like he did, and tried to stay away from him. “They told me the dog’s name was Bo, and said they gave the dog to him,” Johnston said.

Although he has not read the book, “Murder on the Appalachian Trail,” by Jess Carr, he plans to read it soon. He openly speculated that his story might make a good book in itself, but realized that he still has more surgery and healing on his horizon.

“For some reason, Sean and I knew what we had to do to stay alive and we did it,” Johnston said. He expressed his appreciation to the Miller family, rescue squad and all the emergency responders, the health care professionals at Roanoke, his family and the countless number of friends who have come to his support in the hours, days and weeks since his ordeal.

“All things considered, I feel like I’m doing pretty good,” he said and smiled.

— Contact Bill Archer at barcher@bdtonline.com

        

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