GRAND JUNCTION — The affluent Chestnut Drive neighborhood in north Grand Junction is usually so quiet and so removed from even minor crime that most of the neighbors who heard loud pops Saturday morning didn’t think about gunshots.
But they quickly learned their peaceful, dead-end street was the scene of one of the most horrific crimes in Grand Junction history.
One of their neighbors, well- known dentist Dr. Terry Fine, 61, lay dead in the driveway of his home. He had been shot in the neck. His wife, Linda Fine, lay near the street, with a gunshot to the head.
Linda Fine was listed in “good condition” this morning in Grand Junction’s St. Mary’s Hospital, according to a spokesman.
The Fines’ friend Floyce Gallagher, 60, the wife of former Mesa State College president Michael Gallagher, was mortally wounded in the driveway. She would die at nearby St. Mary’s Hospital after her husband raced her from the crime scene in their BMW, slowing down once to yell a warning to a jogger that someone was on a killing spree down the street.
A neighbor, Paco Larsen, who had been outside working on a swamp cooler and tried to come to the victims’ aid, lay in the middle of Chestnut with a gunshot wound to the neck.
No one knows gunman
They had all allegedly been shot by a young man in a green Honda sport utility vehicle, a man who investigators said had no known ties to the victims and whom neighbors said they had never seen in the neighborhood.
He drove up to the front of the Fines’ tan ranch-style home. The Fines and the Gallaghers were outside preparing to leave for a weekend in Las Vegas, police said. He got out of his vehicle and allegedly starting firing — at least 11 shots in all.
His vehicle was spotted nearly 45 minutes after the shootings in a nearby subdivision and, after a brief police chase, the alleged shooter drove his SUV off the side of a road at the edge of an overpass over Interstate 70 less than a half-mile from the shootings.
He then shot himself in the head, according to acting Grand Junction Police Chief Troy Smith. Authorities said his condition was grave.
Mike Doring lives across the street from the Fines and was having coffee with his wife when he heard what he thought were fireworks. He went out on his deck and said he saw a white or silver BMW race down the street followed by a green SUV driving slowly — “meandering” — from the Fines’ house. Then he saw his neighbors.
“My God, there is a body in the street,” he told his wife, then added, “Good God, there are two bodies!”
Another neighbor, Harry Griff, said he heard the commotion and ran outside just after the green SUV had passed by. He ran to Larsen and said Larsen, a 7-foot-tall former college basketball player at Colorado State University, told him, “I’m OK. Go down the street. There are two other victims.”
Griff ran to the Fines.
“Linda was still alive. Terry was gone,” said a shaken Griff, who had walked out to get his newspaper shortly before the shootings.
Fred Krellmeyer, a gun collector who lives down the street, said that when he heard the pops he immediately knew they were gunshots. He thought someone was “goofing off” and firing a six-shot pistol until the pops continued. He counted 11.
“Then I knew it was someone with an automatic,” Krellmeyer said.
He said he got one of his guns to protect himself and watched from behind a window as police cars and ambulances poured into the neighborhood.
Suspect-Lakewood link
Grand Junction police were joined by officers from the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office, the Colorado State Patrol and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation as they worked through the day to process what were essentially four crime scenes. They collected evidence at the Fines’ residence, from the street where Larsen was shot, from the alleged shooter’s vehicle and from Gallagher’s BMW at the hospital. They are also being assisted by the Lakewood Police Department.
Smith said the alleged shooter, who was under guard at St. Mary’s, has ties to Lakewood. He would not give any other details, and the man’s name was not being released. Smith would only say he was in his early 20s.
Larsen was released from the hospital with a bullet that hit very close to his spine still in place.
And the end of Chestnut Drive was still wrapped in crime-scene tape Saturday night.
“This was just senseless,” Doring said. “I don’t know what happened here.”
About the victims
• Dr. Terry Fine had been a dentist in Grand Junction since at least 1982. He had one of the busiest practices in town. He was semi- retired, while continuing as a partner in Fine & Naranja Family Dentistry.
He had two sons with his former wife. Both are in their 20s and live in Grand Junction. His wife, Linda, has a grown daughter who lives in Fruita.
• Floyce “Flo” Gallagher had worked for the Mesa County Valley School District and occasionally worked as a substitute teacher. Michael Gallagher teaches international business at Mesa State. He served as dean of Idaho State University’s College of Business, then as its vice president for academic affairs from 1989 to 1996. He became Mesa State’s president from 1996 to 2003, then returned briefly to Idaho State in 2005 to serve as its interim president. He returned to Mesa State in 2006.
• Paco Larsen, the neighbor wounded in Saturday’s shootings, played basketball at Colorado State University in the mid-1980s. He came to CSU from Mesilla, N.M., and played backup center, according to Gary Ozzello, the university’s associate athletic director.
