When the call came in that two of his fellow deputies needed help, Billy Stiltner was in the yard he shares with his daughter next door, assembling a swing set for his two grandchildren.
He changed into his uniform, then took off toward Vansant, said Brad Vandyke, his next-door neighbor and friend.
But on a rainy Monday afternoon, the partially assembled swing set still sat in the yard, incomplete.
Stiltner never returned home.
Rushing to the aid of two fellow deputies who’d been shot while responding to a call in the Vansant area, he was killed by the same gunman, who in total shot four Buchanan County Sheriff’s deputies, two of them fatally.
“These people are not just employees. We’re family,” said Sheriff Ray Foster, who described feeling “so helpless” as two of his deputies – Stiltner, 46, and Neil Justus, 41 – were shot and killed in front of him.
Billy Stiltner, 46, of Maxie, Va.
“He was just a real good person. He coached Little League sports in the past. He had two grandbabies,” Vandyke began, in trying to describe what the community lost in Billy Stiltner.
“We hunted and fished together, and he loved sports. … My little boy over here, he’d actually go away to games to watch him play.”
Stiltner left behind a wife, Linda, two children, and two grandchildren. His daughter, Anna, is the mother of two toddlers. His son, Morgan, is a senior at Grundy High School.
“He never hesitated a second when they called and said they needed him,” said Vandyke.
Stiltner, an eight-year veteran of the Sheriff’s Office, had most recently worked court security, said Vandyke. He’d been glad to hear that Stiltner had that assignment, he said, because he thought it would be safer than patrolling the roads.
“He was more like a brother, and he was always there when you needed him,” recalls Brenda Rice, a neighbor who said Stiltner was a great husband and father, a good family man. “He’ll greatly be missed.”
Funeral arrangements for Stiltner are being handled by Grundy Funeral Home.
Funeral sevices will be held Wednesday and Thursday nights, with visitation at 6 p.m. and a service at 7 p.m. each night at Harman Freewill Baptist Church. The burial will be at noon Friday at Mountain Valley Memorial Park at Big Rock, Va.
Neil Justus, 41, of Hurley, Va.
Neil Justus also had Sunday off and had just come in from church when the call came that two officers were wounded.
“It’s nothing unusual,” said his wife, Missy Justus, of the way he rushed off to the rescue. “It didn’t even surprise me that he went in. I just never expected he’d be shot.”
She said he was a great father, a great stepfather, a man who’d give everything to make sure those he loved had what they needed.
Answering a phone that seemed to ring off the hook, she held a church bulletin from Sunday, with the words of Jesus printed inside: “Greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
It was from Bethany Bible Church, the church next door that they and many of their relatives attend faithfully. It also quoted John 5:28-29.
“Marvel not at this,” the scripture reads, “For the hour is coming, in which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good until the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.”
Missy Justus takes it to heart. She said it’s helping his family and community cope with the tragedy.
“I think God had a plan for him, that it was his time to go. Even though we don’t understand any of it, God needed him more than we did,” she said. “We’re just looking at it like we know we’ll see him again, and we know where he is.”
In addition to his wife, he leaves behind a daughter, Breana, 17, stepdaughter Christian, 15, and stepson Peyton, 11.
His ex-wife, Jennifer Amaker, is also among those who came to grieve. Arriving in the Justus living room Monday, she knelt down beside Missy Justus and hugged her, and the two women comforted one another.
“He always said if he wanted to go, he wanted to go in a blaze of glory,” said Amaker.
Fighting back tears, they laughed over the shared memory.
“We’d have people knock on our door in the middle of the night. It didn’t matter what it was, he’d go out,” said his widow. “Especially if he thought one of his fellow officers needed him.”
She said Justus, a 10-year veteran of the Sheriff’s Office, also worked hard to help the youth of the community stay out of trouble, founding a local paintball league where they could play.
As people gathered at the church for a prayer vigil Monday evening, the pastor, Paul Rife, said the last time they held such a vigil there was after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
“Neil was a different kind of guy. He was a go-getter,” said Lt. Eddie Stiltner, his supervisor at the Sheriff’s Office. “Whenever something happened, he wanted to be there to help.”
That’s what Justus was doing Sunday, Stiltner said, when he was killed.
Funeral arrangements are being handled by Shortridge-Ramey Funeral Home. Visitation is scheduled for 6-8 p.m. Wednesday at Hurley Middle School, with the funeral scheduled for noon Thursday. Burial will follow at Mountain Valley Memorial Park at Big Rock.
Shane Charles, 25, of Maxie, Va., intensive care
Above all, those who know Shane Charles talk about his music.
“He can play about any instrument that makes noise,” said Lt. Eddie Stiltner, of the
Sheriff’s Office.
Snoda Stacy, an emergency dispatcher, remembers how Charles lifted her spirits and those of other dispatchers during a rough night at work.
While they worked in an office at the top of the stairs, he worked the jail, which is in the downstairs part of the department.
“Shane would sit down at the bottom of the stairs and sing to us,” said Stacy. “Shane just loves music. Shane just loves to sing, and he’s actually on YouTube, Shane singing.”
He would stand at the bottom of the stairs and sing, she said – in the same hallway where deputies lingered Monday to talk about a tragedy that’s hit this close-knit community hard.
In a news conference, Sheriff Ray Foster said Charles was in intensive care at Holston Valley Medical Center, and on a respirator.
A spokesman for Wellmont Health System, which owns and operates the hospitals in Bristol and Kingsport, said late Monday that Charles was in serious condition.
Eric Rasnake, 32, of Jewell Ridge, intensive care
Eric Rasnake, shot three times, might be able to eventually come back to his job, Sheriff’s Office officials said.
During Monday’s news conference, Foster said Rasnake is talkative and “holding his own” at Bristol Regional Medical Center, where he was being treated in intensive care. The Wellmont spokesman said late Monday that Rasnake had been upgraded from critical to serious condition.
“Most of his wounds was clean through, so he wasn’t damaged as bad,” Foster said, expressing hope that Rasnake will recover well enough to return to the department.
Those who worked with him remember him as quiet with a unique sense of humor. Stacy said in the seven years she’s known him she’s never heard him utter a harsh word.
“You had to get to know Eric,” said Mark Lowe, an investigator. “He’s funny though. He could see humor in just about everything.”
Lt. Stiltner said Rasnake is married with two small children.
Foster said Charles and Rasnake are inseparable friends.
“You saw one, you saw the other,” he said.
In the hospital, each wanted to know the other’s condition.
Foster said he, Rasnake, Charles, Stiltner and others in the department were planning a fishing trip later in the week. Now, he said, there’s not going to be any trout fishing.
Virginia State Police Sgt. Steven Lowe said there’s a good indication that both wounded officers will recover.
But this tight-knit, rural county is taking the tragedy hard.
In asking for prayers for the families Monday, Foster likened the impact of the deaths to the county’s worst disasters.
“We went through floods…” he said, calling up memories of the 1977 flood that devastated much of the county. “We’ll pull through this.”
dmccown@bristolnews.com
(276) 791-0701
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