Post by cleopatra on Feb 8, 2021 14:33:03 GMT
REST AREA HAS HOSTED VIOLENCE BEFORE
RONNIE CROCKER Staff WriterDaily Press
September 26, 1989
On a recent misty night at the rest area off the westbound lanes of Interstate 64, a pot-bellied truck driver with a Miami Hurricanes T-shirt stood at a pay phone and told his boss where he was and when he expected to reach his destination.
A man whose car had just broken down sat on a ledge and smoked as he waited for his wife to pick him up. An older couple pulled in to let their granddaughter use the restroom and maybe get a soda. And the diminutive night custodian walked the grounds, hunching inside his windbreaker and sharing a joke with a companion.
Not exactly a scene from a horror movie.
Yet something terrible might have happened in the rest area between the Providence Forge and Talleysville exits two weeks ago. The day after Labor Day, a car belonging to a missing Amelia County man was found abandoned on the side of a road leading back to the highway.
Neither the man, 21-year-old Daniel Lauer, nor his female companion, 18-year-old Anna Marie Phelps, have been found.
That does not mean the pair was abducted or killed at the rest area, but if they were, it would not have been the first time violence has occurred there. State troopers, transportation officials and the New Kent County Commonwealth's attorney say motorists do not need to fear the well-used rest stop - just be careful.
In April 1986, two nurses driving from Tidewater to a seminar in Northern Virginia were roughed up and robbed in the restrooms when they stopped there about 11:30 p.m. The nurses - one male, one female - were not seriously injured. Four men were later convicted of the crimes.
Commonwealth's Attorney Thomas B. Hoover, who has been prosecuting crimes in New Kent since 1980, said last week that other than two assaults there, the robbery of the nurses is the only violent crime that has been reported at either of the two rest areas that flank I-64 in the county.
e quickly added, however, that motorists who pull over there should be alert to possible dangers. In the last two years, he said, there has been an increase in the number of drug arrests at the rest areas and the number of arrests of gay men for sodomy.
"It's not an open-air drug market and it's not a situation where you might get knifed," Hoover said. "But you need to watch yourself and your family when you go to those places. I'd hate to think of my mother or another loved one going down there and seeing two strange men going at it."
Sgt. W.H. Terry of the State Police in West Point agreed there has been an increase in drug use and homosexual activity at the rest areas, but he said troopers patrol the areas routinely. He said the stops are relatively safe.
"It's kind of like a city," Terry said. "You've got people from all walks of life, different backgrounds. It's a real mixture. This interstate carries all sorts of people."
Trooper W.W. Townsend, who regularly patrols the interstate, often during the late-night and early-morning hours when the criminal activity occurs, also downplayed the area's danger. "As far as I'm concerned, it's just as safe as any public street or road in Virginia," he said.
Virginia Department of Transportation officials are more concerned with sewer problems and vandalism of restroom facilities and snack and drink machines at the rest areas. Thomas A. Hawthorne, resident engineer in Henrico, New Kent and Charles City counties, said the rest areas are not in danger of being closed because of criminal activity.
Even the night custodian, who was there when Lauer's car was reported, said he does not feel uncomfortable working there after the sun goes down.
Lauer and Phelps disappeared sometime after leaving Amelia County about 11:15 p.m. Sept. 4 on their way to Virginia Beach, where they shared an apartment with Clinton Lauer, 17. Clinton Lauer is the missing man's brother and Phelps' boyfriend.
Daniel Lauer's car, a gold, two-door 1973 Chevrolet Nova, was found abandoned in the rest area off the westbound lane of interstate about 5:30 p.m. Sept. 5. It was parked on the shoulder of a road leaving the back of the rest area that is reserved for large trucks and vehicles towing other items.
The key was in the ignition, the car was operable and the gas tank was three-quarters full. One door was locked; the other was not. There was no blood in the car and no signs of a struggle.
The State Police, investigating a missing-persons report filed by Lauer's mother, has unconfirmed reports the young people were seen at a picnic table in the rest area about noon or 1 p.m., and coming out of the opposite rest area during the early-morning hours the same day
