Really good people.
That’s how Judy Law describes her Oxford, North Carolina, neighbors Jerome Faulkner, 73, and his wife, Dora, 62 — the couple found dead Thursday by West Virginia authorities, their bodies hidden under a mattress in a red Chevrolet truck after a shootout with police.
“They kept to themselves, but when someone needed them, they were there,” Law said of the Faulkners. “I can’t even begin to understand why something like this happened.”
The first sign of something amiss came Thursday morning, when Law was woken by sirens and fire trucks congregating about 500 feet up the road at the Faulkners’ home in Oxford.
Video showed that a fire had left little more than the home’s front steps, its foundation and some scorched framing.
Granville County, North Carolina, Sheriff Brindell B. Wilkins Jr. later told CNN affiliate WRAL that the Faulkners were at home when two men came in, set their house ablaze and took off with the couple in their pickup truck.
West Virginia police shot at during traffic stop
Hours later and more than 200 miles to the northwest, two police officers from the town of Lewisburg, West Virginia, pulled over a white Chevrolet SUV with North Carolina plates after learning it had been reported stolen.
As the officers were conducting the traffic stop on Interstate 64, a red Chevrolet truck pulled up alongside them, West Virginia State Police Lt. Michael Baylous said.
The driver then “pulled a handgun and shot at both officers,” he said.
The drivers of both Chevrolets fled. The man behind the wheel of the red truck “went over the hillside and was eventually taken into custody,” while the other motorist “drove behind a guardrail on the interstate and hid for a short amount of time,” Baylous said.
“Eventually, he walked up to the interstate and turned himself in to law enforcement without incident,” the State Police lieutenant added.
One of the suspects, 21-year-old Eric Campbell, was in the South Regional Jail in Beaver, West Virginia, on Friday, corrections Officer Jonathan Keller said. He is being held on two counts of malicious assault and two counts of attempted homicide, all charges related to the police shootout.
His father, Edward Campbell, is now in a West Virginia hospital but will face the same charges, according to Baylous. He said the pair are from Alvin, Texas, a Houston suburb some 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers) from where they were found.
Neighbor of victims: ‘It’s senseless’
The West Virginia police officers who the father and son pair allegedly shot and wounded were taken to Greenbrier Valley Medical Center. Their conditions were not known Friday morning.
It was not immediately clear what charges, if any, the Campbells might face in the case of Jerome and Dora Faulkner.
Their deaths have already shaken people in Oxford, a community of about 8,000 people 30 miles (48 kilometers) northeast of Durham.
Law, for one, is having trouble understanding how something so bad could happen to such good people.
“It’s senseless,” she said.
