Missing Chesterfield barber is found dead

Other than a 10-inch tire mark on a guardrail and a twisted trail leading into a small patch of trees, there was not much pointing the way to the body of Ricky Viar.

But the 31-year-old motorcyclist and barber had friends looking for him.

"You couldn't find a better person who had more friends," said Viar's boss, Barbara Wright, who owns The New Barber Shop at the Victorian Square shopping center off Hull Street Road. Viar had worked there for four years.

"You saw someone with a good haircut in Chesterfield County, chances are he knew Ricky," she said.

Viar's influence spread far beyond his barber's chair.

"Getting a haircut from Ricky was the way I stayed in touch with all my friends," said Bubba Craddock, a high school classmate. "You didn't go see Ricky just to get a haircut -- it was the way you kept up with everybody. The haircut took a few minutes, but you'd stay for hours."

So when Viar's cell phone went unanswered in the early-morning hours Friday, there was immediate concern.

Missing-person posters went up over much of the county, and as many as 100 people -- friends, fellow riders and family -- searched for the Winterpock resident whose metallic blue GSX 1000 motorcycle was a fast-moving landmark.

The search ended yesterday shortly after 2 p.m., 109 feet beyond the harmless-looking tire mark on the guardrail, in a dark patch of poplar and gum trees.

"His body was entangled amidst the wreckage of the motorcycle," trooper J.H. Reisch said.

Wright and other friends said it was a miracle Viar's body was found at all.

During the holiday weekend, friends had first looked in the Woodpecker Road area, near Viar's home. But police were able to es-tablish that the last contact with Viar's cell phone had occurred within a 2-mile radius of a cell-phone tower that overlooks the crash site.

Yesterday, a friend walking the Courthouse Road exit ramp of the Powhite Parkway eastbound noticed the tire mark on the guardrail and was able to trace tire marks into the woods.

Dozens of searchers gathered yesterday near the crash site in a drizzling rain. As a hearse carrying Viar's body pulled onto Courthouse Road past the group at 5:13 p.m., Viar's mother, Brenda, led the somber delegation in the Lord's Prayer.

"He was a good, good person," she said.

Amber Thurman, Viar's girlfriend, tried to talk about him.

They had planned to spend the Fourth of July at the beach, she said.

He was a wonderful friend, full of jokes and oblivious to people's reaction to his carefree ways, she said.

"He told me we'd get married once I got my credit straight," she said, breaking into tears.

State police said Viar's death remains under investigation. A cause of death will be determined by the state medical examiner's office.

Contact Bill McKelway at (804) 649-6601 or .