HONAKER, Va. --
At 8 p.m. Easter Sunday, Donald Baldwin was sitting on his porch petting his bobtail cat when he saw the man across his narrow, gravel street storm out his front door. William Anthony Blackburn, Baldwin’s longtime friend and neighbor for five years, turned toward the swing in the corner of the porch. He raised his right hand and Baldwin saw a gun. Bushes blocked his view; he couldn’t see if anyone was on the swing.
For a second, no one made a sound, Baldwin said. If anyone shouted, he didn’t hear them.
Then, “bang, bang, bang,” Baldwin said. “He flew back into the house. It wasn’t maybe a minute -- then bang, three more times, and that was it.”
Shirley Blankenship, who lives in the house with her daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter, ran out the back door, Baldwin said. She took cover behind a Jeep in the driveway and called 911. She saw Baldwin and gestured for him to come over. He didn’t, he said, he was scared he’d be shot on the way.
Captain Bryant Skeen with the Russell County Sheriff’s Office said that at 8 p.m., Blankenship called and said she thought her son-in-law shot her daughter and her granddaughter. When the first round of deputies arrived 10 minutes later, they found Blankenship’s granddaughter, 18-year-old Jodi Sisk, dead on the front porch. She’d been shot multiple times in the chest, Skeen said.
Unsure if there was an active shooter in the house, police backed away and tried to coax him out. In time, 18 Sheriff’s Office tactical units, the Virginia State Police, medics from two jurisdictions and a fire squad packed onto Tennessee Street, a one-lane, quiet drive in the New Garden community just outside of Honaker.
They set up a perimeter around the small, tidy A-Frame house adorned with wind chimes, angel statues and a handwritten plaque hanging on the door: “Welcome to the nut house,” it says as a joke.
A sharpshooter crouched and aimed from Baldwin’s front porch, he said, as he and his wife peeked out from the kitchen window. For more than a half hour, police tried to lure Blackburn out, then hearing and seeing nothing inside, sent in a SWAT team.
Deputies found 45-year-old Tina Blackburn, dead from multiple gunshot wounds, on the living room floor next to her husband, 45-year-old William Anthony Blackburn, who’d shot himself once.
The gun – a Smith & Wesson 9mm semiautomatic pistol – was lying nearby.
Skeen said William Anthony Blackburn shot at Shirley Blankenship as she fled the house, though she was not injured. The Blackburns had apparently been arguing for the better part of the day, Skeen said. It wasn’t their first fight, Skeen said. Deputies have been to the house several times for domestic disputes, he said, but he declined to elaborate on the circumstances.
In 2006, Tina Blackburn was charged with assault and battery against her husband, William Anthony Blackburn, when “it was found that [she] did strike him in the mouth, leaving a small cut on his upper lip,” according to court records. The charge was later dismissed.
The Russell County District Court clerk’s office confirmed that there had been protective orders filed by or against family members at some point, though refused to provide a copy Monday afternoon.
If there was trouble across the way, Baldwin said he never suspected it. William Blackburn worked in the mines, he said. He and Tina got married about five years ago and they’d lived across the street with Tina’s mother and daughter ever since.
“These are the finest people you’d ever want to meet,” Baldwin said. “They’re good friends; they’d do anything for you. If you got sick, they’d just wear you to death calling to check on you. They’d go to town and get your groceries if you weren’t well enough to go. They’re just good-hearted people.”
A half hour before the first shot, he said, Shirley Blankenship called and said she was “checking in,” as she does nearly every night. She didn’t let on that anything was wrong. She asked Baldwin if he’d help her plow her garden the next day and bemoaned having to take her Jeep to the shop.
He said Blankenship’s daughter and granddaughter were “her whole world.”
“They’re just the sweetest people you’ll ever meet in your life,” he said.
Baldwin and his wife didn’t sleep all night, he said. He rode his lawnmower around all day Monday, planted some potatoes and fiddled around in his garden. He was just trying to get his mind off the killings, he said.
“I lost three good friends there,” he said. “I guess you never know what runs through people’s minds.”
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