Police kill gunman

Keith Paul

Thursday, Dec. 9, 1999 | 11:14 a.m.

Chun Hall's voiced cracked a little and then she started to cry when she heard her daughter's voice over the phone Wednesday.

It had been more than a week since 25-year-old Vanessa Hall was forced at gunpoint to leave her family's beauty supply store by her sometime-boyfriend Troy Oden. Vanessa Hall called her mother Wednesday from an ambulance in Pennsylvania after Oden (a k a Troy Matthews) had held a gun to her head for more than six hours during a standoff with police.

"Every day, every single day I've been worried and I prayed," Chun Hall said. "She was crying, but said she's OK. I was crying. It's all over."

A Pennsylvania State Police trooper shot 29-year-old Oden in the head about 3:20 p.m. Eastern time outside a rest stop near White Haven on Interstate 80, about 85 miles north of Philadelphia, after six hours of negotiations failed.

Hall, who was put up in a hotel by Pennsylvania police, was to fly back to Las Vegas today, her sister Lisa Hall said. Police took Vanessa Hall to a local hospital to be checked out after the ordeal.

"She said she's fine, but she doesn't want to talk about what happened," Lisa Hall said.

Vanessa Hall met Oden when she was a 16-year-old student at Rancho High School. The two had an on-and-off relationship for the next 10 years, but mostly had problems recently. They had three children together -- ages 7, 5 and 18 months.

Oden, a convicted felon, had threatened to kill Hall in the past and in recent weeks his attempts to see her included breaking into her house on Halloween, according to a Metro Police report. Hall had secured a temporary restraining order against Oden, but the paper did little to stop him from coming around.

Metro Police were seeking Oden for violating that order and breaking into Hall's house when he stormed into the beauty supply shop on East Bonanza Road on Nov. 29 and took Hall at gunpoint.

Since then Metro Police have been getting tips, but each time they followed the tips, Oden and Hall were gone when they arrived, Sgt. Tom Wagner of the domestic violence unit said.

"They had stayed in a vacant apartment," he said. "They went to other people's houses."

Detectives talked with a woman who said she bought a pair of bus tickets from Las Vegas to New York for Oden and Hall, who left Saturday.

The bus went from here to Cleveland, then on to New York. Oden, who was sentenced to 7 1/2 years for a 1991 attempted robbery conviction and has several arrests, was born in Buffalo, N.Y.

At some point Wednesday while in Pennsylvania, Hall scribbled a note on a napkin saying she was being held hostage on the bus. The note apparently was handed to another passenger who then gave it to the bus driver, Milton Leverette, police said.

The driver, deciding the note was legitimate, pulled over at the next rest area and told the passengers there was engine trouble. The bus was working fine, but Leverette, a driver for about 10 years, wanted to get all of the people off the bus and call police.

Anytime Greyhound drivers feel threatened or "have a gut instinct," they are told to pull over and call police, Kristin Parsley, spokeswoman for the Dallas-based bus company, said.

"In this case Mr. Leverette did, and he probably ended up saving lives," she said.

State troopers arrived about 9 a.m. Eastern time and found Oden holding on to Hall near a flagpole. When he spotted the police, he pulled out his gun. The 45 other passengers were taken inside the rest stop or to the nearby state police barracks.

For hours Oden talked with a police negotiator. As the negotiator spoke, a tactical team was getting ready in case they were called on to take him by force. A sniper also was perched ready to fire if needed.

About 3:20 p.m. EDT time, Oden started moving toward the bus with Hall.

"He was ordered not to move anymore. The last thing we wanted was for him to enter the bus with her," Trooper Lisa Girman, state police spokeswoman, said.

Oden moved closer to the bus. Police suspect he was trying to get into the bus because the sun was going down, and the temperature was dropping. He also was probably tired from standing for six hours.

A sniper fired one shot, hitting Oden in the head, killing him, as he still had his arm on Hall.