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Shooting rampage leaves one dead, six injured
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he community
o f Roanoke
mourned, prosecuted and got back
to living life during the days fol
lowing the shooting rampage at the
Backstreet Cafe, one of only two
gay bars in the southwestern Virginia town. The
Sept. 22 incident left one dead and six people
hospitalized.
Danny Lee Overstreet, 43, was hit in the
chest in the flurry of bullets and died within sec
onds. His charming flamboyance was celebrated
in a service Sept. 27.
“He had an infectious laugh,” said his 17-
year-old niece, Misty Overstreet. He sometimes
did drag under the name “Iwanna” and often
donated money to animal welfare organizations.
Co-workers at Verizon (formerly Bell
Atlantic) recalled how the rotund ex-beautician
would remind people when it was time to get
their roots dyed. Or how he sometimes would
bring his champagne-colored poodle to work
wearing a leopard-skin coat.
Page W ebb remains hospitalized in serious
condition with a bullet wound in the neck.
John C ollins went home after being shot in
the gut.
He must use a colostomy bag while his
colon heals. Doctors won’t know for three
months if he must use the
bag permanently or if addi
tional surgery will be able
to restore use of his large
intestine.
Local and national gay
organizations successfully
—
convinced U .S . Sen. John
W arner, R -V a., to back
hate crimes legislation in response to the
tragedy. He recently switched from opposi
tion to support for the bill, although h e’s still
reluctant to attach it to a Defense authoriza
tion bill.
Confessed shooter Ronald Edward Gay,
54, was indicted by a grand jury O ct. 2.
Charges include the first-degree murder o f
Overstreet, six counts o f aggravated malicious
wounding and one count o f shooting into an
occupied building.
The cumulative prison time could total 180
years. T he trial is set for January, although he
might not be found competent to stand trial.
T h e picture of Gay that continues to
emerge is one of a deeply troubled man with a
history of treatment for psychiatric illness. The
turning point came during his service as a
Marine in 1968 in Vietnam, where he had to
gather the charred remains of seven men of his
platoon blown to pieces when their truck
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GAY AND LESBIAN PATHWAYS:
Danny Lee Overstreet
E X A M I N I N G O U R SP IR IT U A L JO U R N E Y S
struck a land mine.
Gay returned from the war a different man—
one who drank too much, heard voices in his
head, wandered back and forth from Virginia to
his birth home in Nova Scotia to Florida and
went through at least five failed marriages. He
was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disor
der and prescribed the anti-depressant Prozac
and the anti-anxiety drug Clonipin. By 1992, he
was receiving full disability from the Veterans
Administration.
G ay’s children changed
their last names, in part
because their father was
absent, in part because of
the growing association of
the word with the homo
sexual community. A t
times, he railed against
this, a fact community
leaders point to in calling the shooting an
anti-gay hate crime.
But family and friends who know him best
say Gay is not anti-gay. In an interview with
the Roanoke Times , Laura Ramsey, who
became his fourth wife in 1994, said that she
was in a lesbian relationship when they met
and that he was accepting of the fact.
“He wasn’t homophobic,” she said. The cou
ple’s social circle included gays and lesbians.
O n Father’s Day of this year, Gay burst into
Ramsey’s Florida home demanding to see their
son. He said he would shoot her and her current
husband but left before the police arrived.
A judge ordered Gay to surrender his
weapons and undergo psychiatric evaluation,
but apparently neither occurred. Ramsey said
the problems arise when he is not on his med
ications.
The shooting has been a catalyst for the
Roanoke gay community. A new group, the
Hate Free Roanoke Task Force, formed to coor
dinate a response.
It is pushing for state and federal hate crimes
legislation and coordinated a series of vigils out
side the cafe and elsewhere. There is revived
talk of creating a gay and lesbian community
center to serve the scattered population.
The Backstreet Cafe reopened Oct. 1.
“This is our home; I can’t let Ronald Gay
take that away from me,” said Sue Stroud, who
was shooting pool when the lead started flying.
“I got to focus on the positive, the good. I’ve got
to take back my bar.”
Manager Alan Blanekship added: “We felt
like it was time. We missed our family.’
"This is
our home;
I can't let Ronald Gay
take that away from me."
Sue Stroud
'in
B ob R oehr is a free-lance reporter based in
Ronald Gay
BRtD CETO W N
always looking for one more satisfied customer.
Washington, D .C .
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 15. 2000
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For more information, please call (503) 233-2026 ext. 3
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