Accused killer found on Virginia Tech campus

BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP)

MORVA

William Morva was known as a “fringe character” around the Virginia Tech campus, but was considered harmless by students, police officers and store clerks who knew him. They were shocked Monday at his arrest following a manhunt that shutdown the campus for hours as police sought him for the slayings of a sheriff’s deputy and an unarmed hospital guard.

Morva had some unorthodox ideas and never wore shoes, said Madigan Milford, a Tech student from Berryville who worked at a downtown coffee shop. She said Morva used to talk about how much he liked to go deer hunting and commune with nature.

“I thought he was weird,” she said. “I would even say he was crazy, but harmless crazy.”

Brian Segal, a Tech senior, said he knew Morva in passing and that he wasn’t a student and didn’t have a job on campus.

“He was always kind of a fringe character,” Segal said.

Blacksburg officer M.L. Haynie said Morva had been homeless for several years.

The search for Morva brought hundreds of police to the 2,600-acre campus on the first day of classes for the semester. Some 6,000 professors and other Tech workers were sent home for the day, and the school asked its 26,000 students to stay in their dormitories or apartments.

Morva, 24, was sought for the fatal shootings of Montgomery County Sheriff’s Cpl. Eric E. Sutphin as the decorated police veteran moved in on the fugitive Monday morning and hospital security guard Derrick McFarland.

He escaped early Sunday after overpowering a sheriff’s deputy, taking the deputy’s gun and shooting McFarland, 26. The deputy was in stable condition with a concussion and other severe head injuries he suffered in the attack.

Morva had been taken from the Montgomery County Jail to Montgomery Regional Hospital for treatment of a sprained leg and wrist. He had been jailed awaiting trial on charges of attempting to rob a store last year. He was scheduled for trial Wednesday.

Morva was arrested around 3:30 p.m. when he was found hiding in a briar patch on an off-campus trail about 150 yards from where the deputy was shot Monday morning, interim Blacksburg Police Chief Kim Crannis said in an afternoon news conference. A weapon also was recovered, but police would not elaborate.