Dinwiddie shooting prompts warning about Pagans

DINWIDDIE -- A law-enforcement officer fatally shot a man early yesterday as Virginia State Police and federal agents were serving a search warrant at his house on Halifax Road in northern Dinwiddie County.

The man, identified as James M. Hicks Jr., 45, was taken to VCU Medical Center in Richmond, where he was pronounced dead, said state police Sgt. Thomas Molnar.

Last night, Molnar described the Dinwiddie matter as "separate and distinct" from the arrests yesterday of dozens of members of the Pagans Motorcycle Club in Virginia, West Virginia and other Middle Atlantic states.

But a bulletin broadcast yesterday afternoon by Richmond police warned law-enforcement officers to be aware that information had been developed that members of the Pagans planned to come to Virginia to seek retaliation for Hicks' death.

The bulletin was genuine, said Richmond police spokesman Gene Lepley. But the broadcasts, which can be monitored by the public listening to police radios, were ended last night because they were meant only for the knowledge of law enforcement, Lepley said. According to the broadcast, it was not certain whether all law-enforcement officers were targeted or whether only federal agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) were.

Four Virginia residents, in the Roanoke area and in Alexandria, were named in an 83-page federal indictment unsealed yesterday in Charleston, W.Va. Hicks' name does not appear in the indictment, which charges Pagan members with multiple racketeering, firearms and extortion charges.

Molnar urged anyone with information about criminal activity or Hicks to call Virginia State Police at (877) 482-8477.

Hicks is listed in county real estate records as the owner and occupant of the home. A neighbor, Ron Gibbs, said Hicks had lived there with his wife, Kathy, a bus driver for the Dinwiddie County school system.

State police were working with ATF agents at the time of the shooting, which occurred about 6:05 a.m. as they were entering the home in the 10000 block of Halifax Road. The house is in a rural area containing farm fields and is not far from a rear entrance to Richard Bland College.

No law-enforcement officers were wounded in the shooting, which Molnar said occurred inside the home.

Citing the search warrant that had been sealed by a federal court, authorities declined to release details about their case, the nature of the search warrant they were serving or the circumstances that preceded the shooting.

Officers spent much of the morning and part of the afternoon gathering forensic evidence in their investigation of the shooting. Once completed, federal agents carried out their already planned search of the home, Molnar said.

It was not clear last night how many times Hicks may have been shot or what the law-enforcement affiliation is of the person who shot him.

Brian Swann, resident agent in charge of ATF's Richmond office, said yesterday that no additional information would be released until today at the earliest.

Gibbs, who lives next door, said he heard a police siren go by his house as he and his wife were getting up yesterday morning about 6. He didn't think much about it until he looked out his kitchen window and saw emergency lights flashing outside his neighbor's house. He didn't hear any shots.

"I was like, 'Wow, what's going on?'" Gibbs said. "We're supposed to live out in the country where it's peaceful and quiet."

When he walked down his long drive to fetch his newspaper, "there was just more and more police officers and people, kind of combing the yard," Gibbs said. "So I just took my paper and went on back into the house."

Gibbs described Hicks as a "super, great guy" and said he didn't know why police would want to search his house. Aside from a "party or two," Gibbs said he hasn't seen anything unusual at the home. Gibbs said Hicks has lived next door for seven or eight years.

"We've had dinner over at Jim's house from time to time, and he comes over here" occasionally, Gibbs said. "He likes to [hunt] frogs over here and make frog legs. And he helped me cut a tree down out of my roof one time -- just a super nice fellow."

Gibbs recalled an incident this past summer in which Hicks dispatched a menacing snake in Gibbs' wife's flower garden. "I didn't have a shotgun, and my wife called Jim," Gibbs said. "He came over and took care of the problem for us and took the snake away."

Gibbs said he didn't know what Hicks did for a living. "I just know every morning he gets on his motorcycle, and he rides to work," he said.

Another man and two children had stayed at Hicks' home at one time, but Gibbs said he didn't know if they still lived there.

James Peterson, a retired Petersburg firefighter who lives four houses away, said he didn't know what to make of the police raid and shooting. He was already up when police converged on the house but, like Gibbs, he heard no shots.

"When I came out, I had never seen this many police cars," he said.

Yesterday's shooting was the second in less than a week involving area law-enforcement officers serving warrants.

Last Thursday, a fugitive wanted on warrants in two localities was shot and wounded when authorities say he drew a weapon on members of a task force sent to arrest him in Chesterfield County.

Thomas G. Wells, 32, was critically wounded, but police yesterday say he is expected to recover. Chesterfield police Capt. Terry Patterson said Wells is heavily medicated, and investigators will not attempt to talk with him until he becomes coherent.

Contact Mark Bowes at (804) 649-6450 or .

Staff writer Bill McKelway contributed to this report.