Pat Dollard | Young Americans

By REX BOWMAN - (TIMES-DISPATCH)

ROANOKE — An aide to U.S. Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., was found shot dead beside a Botetourt County road yesterday morning. A gun was found beneath his body.
Botetourt investigators are not calling Frederick Wayne Hutchins Jr.’s death either a suicide or a murder, saying they are awaiting autopsy results from the state medical examiner’s office in Roanoke.

Hutchins, a Botetourt native who lived in Roanoke and managed Webb’s Roanoke office, was 26.

Sheriff Ronnie Sprinkle said Hutchins’ body was found outside his vehicle, described as a SUV-type, on an embankment along U.S. 220 north of the town of Fincastle.

Hutchins had a single gunshot wound to the head.

Sprinkle said Hutchins died between 4:30 a.m. — when a patrolling officer drove the stretch of Route 220 and saw no vehicle parked along the road — and 7:08 a.m., when a second officer stopped to check on a vehicle parked along the southbound lanes. Hutchins’ body was near the vehicle.

Hutchins, a Democratic operative in the Roanoke Valley, was an early campaigner for Webb and had worked in Webb’s Roanoke office since the day it opened, Webb spokeswoman Jessica Smith said.

News of Hutchins’ death, she said, had stunned the office: “This came as a complete surprise to us.”

Webb issued a written statement in which he said he is terribly saddened by Hutchins’ death. He added: “Freddie was one of the most honorable and friendly individuals I have had the pleasure of knowing. He was a mainstay in the Roanoke community and a friend to all who knew him. My condolences go out to his mother, Karen, and the rest of his family and friends. He will be greatly missed.”

Maj. Delbert Dudding of the Botetourt Sheriff’s Department said the medical examiner’s office has given investigators no indication of when it will determine the cause and manner of Hutchins’ death. The medical examiner’s office referred all questions back to the sheriff’s office.