Wednesday, April 23, 2008

SWAT team standoff in Bath County ... one dead

As Augusta County and Staunton SWAT teams surrounded a heavily-fortified gazebo on a 300-acre farm in Bath County Tuesday night, 50-year-old Don Rice fired shots at law enforcement officers and then put a bullet in his head, ending a standoff that had begun earlier in the day. Rice, a 1974 graduate ofRobert E. Lee High School in Staunton, was found dead inside the structure.

The two-story farmhouse at Scotchtown Farm, a picturesque area west of Craigsville and Deerfield in Augusta County, burned to the ground, possibly from a fire started by Rice who was bipolar and had threatened suicide in the past.

Details of the event and photos are in the Waynesboro News Virginian.

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