July 19, 1988

The Victims: One by One, a Happy Sunday came to a Bitter End for Four

For four victims of a shooting spree along Old Salisbury Road, Sunday had been a happy day - up to the moments before 11:30 p.m. when they began driving one by one, into a 12-minute gauntlet of gunfire that left the four of them dead and five others wounded.

- Ronald Lee Hull, 32, and his wife, Darlene, 29, who was wounded in the incident, had spent the evening playing penny-ante poker and Bingo at a family gathering held to send his mother off on a week-long vacation. Their son, Ronald Adam Hull, 8, was with them.

- Melinda Yvonne Hayes, 21, was with her boyfriend.

- Crystal Suzanne Cantrell, 16,was at her boyfriend's house, where she got the good news that she had been named to an All-Star softball team to represent North Carolina in interstate play.

- Thomas Walter Nicholson, 24, was with his fiancee in Yadkin County, planning their future.

"We'd had a quiet evening together," said David Hull, one of Ronald's four older brothers. "He'd been happy-go-lucky the whole time. It blows our minds. You wouldn't ever expect anything like this to happen."

Members of the Hull family spent Sunday at their mother's mobile home on Velyn Drive in southern Forsyth County. They barbecued, and had intended to fish in the lake behind her trailer, but instead spent most of the day inside to stay out of the heat.

The Hulls gathered at the trailer again last night after spending part of the day at Baptist Hospital, where Mrs. Hull was recuperating from gunshot wounds in the chest and arm. Their son was not injured in the incident.

David Hull spoke with his sister-in-law yesterday. The assailant, Michael Hayes, smashed the driver's window of his brother's truck after waving him to a halt, Hull said, retelling Darlene Hull's account of the incident.

"He tried to talk with him and do what he said to do," Hull said, standing on the porch outsidenis mother's home.

"He tried to talk with him, but before Ronnie could get out, he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger. . . . All Ronnie did when he was shot was grunt twice and fall over."

Hull said that Ronald's wife started screaming.

"The guy looked at her and looked at Adam and shot her," he said. "She hollered for Adam to get on the floorboard, because she was already on the floorboard herself."

Hayes was shot by deputies minutes later.

David Hull, who lives at 4095 McArthur Road, received a call at home later from the Sheriffs, Department, telling him that he needed to pick his nephew up at the scene. He got there a little after midnight.

"The first thing he said to me was that his daddy was dead - that he couldn't talk with him - and that his daddy was dead," Hull said.' "He said his mother was alive, because she was talking, but his daddy was dead."

Ronald Hull had been a truck driver for RJR Tobacco for 14 years. He was a graduate of Parkland High School, and he and his family lived at 1217 Brencomb Drive, off of Gumtree Road in Forsyth County.

Miss Hayes, who was not related to the assailant, lived with her father, Earnest Hayes, in the family's brick house on Mount Olivet Road behind the Crowfoot Car Center on N.C. 150 in Davidson County.

Her father, overcome with grief, was unable to talk about his daughter.

"Just let it alone, chief," he said during a phone call yesterday. "I don't want to talk about it. I'm too shook up today to deal with anything."

Charles Hayes, her brother, was faring better - although he had been called to the late-night scene by deputies and found the driver's seat of his sister's car full of blood.

"It was a shock - a shock," he said.

Miss Hayes, a slender blond-haired woman who turned 21 in March, was shot as she was returning home after driving her boyfriend to his house on Jonestown Road, her brother said.

His sister was planning to get married, he said.

"It's still hasn't sunk in yet," he said early yesterday afternoon while standing in front of his bobile home behind the family house. " I guess I'm still in shock.

"She never had anyone against her in the world. She was always friendly and got along with everyone."

News of Miss Hayes's death was causing a stir yesterday at North Davidson High School in Welcome, which she attended until leaving in 1985 at the end of her junior year.

Paul R. Payne, an assistant principal, remembered her as a pleasant woman who did well in school but left for personal reasons.

"She was not the cheerleader type," he said. "She was not a discipline problem either. She was the kind of person who just blended in with the rest of society."

Walt K. Broom, the school's principal, agreed.

"She was just one of those kinds of students who come through and you don't know a whole lot about," he said.

Miss Hayes worked at Shutt Hartman Construction Co. Inc. on N.C. 150 in Clemmons, her brother said. He declined to talk at length.

Friends of Miss Cantrell said that she had been at the home of her boyfriend, Jonathan Annas, where she received the news that she had been named to an All-Star softball team that was to represent North Carolina in interstate playoffs. She had left, driving a black Camaro, in order to get home in time to meet her regular 11:30 p.m. curfew.

"She had just left the house," said Ola Annas, who said she was Jonathan's grandmother. "Her mother called and said she hadn't got home.... My grandson jumped in his car and went to check on her. And he got there as the police (deputies) got there. But they wouldn't let him see her. Then they roped it off. His car is still in the part that got roped off."

Miss Cantrell's parents, Joel and Linda Cantrell and sisters Wendy Gurley and Tracey C. Miller, did not wish to comment for publication.

However, friends had been told that Mrs. Gurley had started out to look for her sister shortly after young Annas did. She was later joined by their mother, a friend said,but they were barred from the scene by deputies and asked to go home. Later, deputies arrived at their home and broke the tragic news.

Miss Cantrell was a rising senior at Parkland High School, where she was a member of the school's Dixie Debs dance team and the computer and Latin clubs and an active member of Corner Stone Baptist Church. Her father works for R.J. Reynolds, and her mother operates a small beauty. shop.

"She was a good student," said Beth Frye, Miss Cantrell's softball coach with the South Big League team and a friend for over eight years. "She was well-liked by her peers and her teachers."

Ms. Frye had just learned of Miss Cantrell's selection as a pitchter and infielder for the All Star team that was to begin practicing in King this afternoon for games with teams from Virginia and West Virginia. Ms. Frye had told Mrs. Cantrell of Crystal's selection, and Crystal had just gotten the word from her mother.

"I hoped to break the news to her, but her mama had already called her," said Ms. Frye. "They were so happy. . . . Crystal had called me. I had called the All-Star coach to see if it was all right for Crystal to miss the first practice, due to the fact that she had been scheduled to work.

"I told her there was no problem.We hung up about 10 minutes to 11. . . .Evidently they (family members) waited up for her to come come to see her reaction. They were thrilled for her to make it."

The work Miss Cantrell had been scheduled to do today was at Cindy's Bake Shop at Hanes Mall. She had been employed there only three days, but had already made friends.

"She learned very quickly," ,said Candy Reddick, struggling to control her voice. "She was just a pleasure to be with in the short time she was with.us. I'm telling you - it was a pleasure knowing her. We're just all in a state of shock around here."

Ms. Frye, her voice also choked with emotion at times, spoke almost entirely in superlatives of her young friend. .

"She was a good girl," said Ms. Frye. "She comes from a good family. They're Christian people, they're likable people, they're a close-knit family.

"I've known Crystal since 1979-'80, when she first started. She didn't give. me any problems. I could say, 'Crystal, stand on your head,' and she'd say, 'OK.'

"Crystal always had a smile. Crystal was. always pleasant, always willing. . . . She always played ball. She was a determined person.

"If we were losing a game, she'd go out and say, 'We ain't losing this game. And the only way we can win it is if everybody plays together.' And then in the bottom of the seventh inning, they would try to come back.... If we lost, she'd come off the field and say, 'Well, we'll get 'em next time.' "

Similar words of praise were used by those who knew Thomas W. "Tom" Nicholson, another of the dead in Sunday night's shooting rampage.

Nicholson, a machinist and engine assembler at Golden Shamrock Enterprises on Old Salisbury Road, was a 1982 graduate of Davie High School, where he was the president of the student council. He also studied engine mechanics at Forsyth Technical College.

Nicholson, who also lived with his parents, was shot while driving his aging Dodge pickup truck home from a visit with his fiancee, Bobbie Jo Eddleman, who lives near Forbush in Yadkin County. They had been looking at land and a mobile home very recently and planning for their marriage, according to friends and Stephen Nicholson, an older brother.

Of those closest to Nicholson - his parents are AT&T artist R.B. Nicholson and his wife, Doris - only his brother was willing to talk - and then only briefly, and after first declining.

"As far as talking," said Stephen Nicholson, "nobody wants to because of the stress.... He was my only brother. It was just us two.

"He was engaged and wanting to buy some land. It's just so tragic. It's just so hard to describe the sense of loss."

At Golden Shamrock, friends were devastated.

"He was just a super guy," Don Miller, the company's owner, said of young Nicholson. "Everybody in the shop thought the world of him. He was just as easy. . . . I never saw him get excited.

"He and his fiancee had gone and looked at a trailer. . . . They were planning to get married."

Danny Miller, the shop foreman, added: "He was the kind of guy, he'd take a day off to show his goats to a bunch of kids in school. Show 'em a baby goat."

The reference was to a farm that the Nicholson family operates on Old Rural Hall Road. Just this past November, The Journal's farm editor, Parker Maddrey, wrote a feature article about the farm, where miniature horses and pygmy goats are bred and raised.

The farm and flea markets, where he enjoyed trading, were among interests that friends of Nicholson described as wholesome. He didn't go to bars - didn't drink or use illegal substances, the friends said.

"He'd be the last person in the world to be in a position to be shot with a gun," said Don Miller. "This is just tragic. . . . It's hard for us to believe that it's true."

It was also hard for Nicholson's brother, who noted the irony in talking about the suspect, Michael Charles Hayes. He had heard that the family of Hayes, who was in critical condition at N.C. Baptist Hospital, had made attempts earlier in the weekend to have him committed to a psychiatric facility.

"It's sort of ironic," said Stephen Nicholson. "They're trying to save his life so he can go to trial - which he never will do, because he's obviously mentally incompetent. At the most, he'll be sent to a hospital. . . . "It's just such a tragedy."