Man dies after being shot in head

Sharon Moore got word of the shooting Friday, shortly after their 9-year-old daughter Katherine climbed aboard a school bus.

 “It hit me. How am I going to tell her? Because [he] was her world,” Moore said from her Georgia home. “A day wouldn’t go by and she’d be asking, ‘Can I call Daddy? Can I call Daddy?’”

The little girl’s father, Anthony Scott Moore, 32, of Staunton, died Monday morning when family members removed him from life support, police and relatives said. Authorities charged Alan Dale Bartley, 57, of Staunton, with first-degree murder.

Violence erupted Thursday night in the home where Moore lived with his mother, Cynthia Fitzgerald, 56, of Staunton. The boyfriend of Katherine’s grandmother, Bartley clashed with Moore, then shot him in the head and Fitzgerald in the chest, police said. Hospital officials listed Fitzgerald in fair condition at the University of Virginia Medical Center, a hospital spokesman said.

Sharon Moore said she and Anthony Moore divorced about a year ago, but remained friends. She stayed in Georgia and Anthony returned to Virginia, she said. In death he left behind two daughters.

“When we had met, back in 1998, I had a 3-year-old daughter by a previous marriage,” Moore said. “He kind of took on a father role. People would ask and he’d say, ‘I have two daughters.’ ”

Both names are tattooed on his arm.

Breaking the night

The 911 call came to police a few minutes before 10 p.m. Thursday.

Staunton police found Bartley on his knees in the front yard of Moore’s home in the 300 block of Campbell Street.

“Officers found [Bartley] being held down by neighbors in the front yard with a gunshot wound to his torso,” according to a search warrant filed in Augusta County Circuit Court.

Inside, police found Moore alive and talking, despite the head wound. Nearby, Fitzgerald held her chest.

According to the warrant, Moore and Bartley argued earlier in the evening.

“Bartley walked out of the residence and returned approximately 10 minutes later with a small caliber firearm,” the warrant states.

As Moore struggled, the gun went off, a bullet striking Bartley on the left side of his waist, authorities said.

A helicopter landed nearby at Fisher Auto Parts on Statler Boulevard, and a rescue crew airlifted Fitzgerald and Moore to Charlottesville.

An ambulance took Bartley to Augusta Health in Fishersville where he was treated and then taken to Middle River Regional Jail in Verona.

A return North

Sharon Moore described call as an “out-of-body-experience.”

“We had just talked the day before,” she said.

Moore said Bartley had served as a father or grandfather-figure to Anthony.

When she learned the details of the case, Moore said she knew she needed to make the drive to Virginia. She packed her Chevrolet Tahoe and prepared to tell Katherine.

“She got off the school bus and it was very hard – and she took it very hard,” Moore said. “Especially the circumstances in which it happened.”

Since the divorce, Anthony saw his daughter only a few times a year, she said.

Katherine stayed with her father for part of the summer, when he taught her how to swim and the basics of archery.

“She did a lot of growing up over the summer,” Moore said. “He was always planning on taking [the girls] hunting when they were old enough.”

When they arrived at the hospital, relatives looked to Katherine for help in deciding what would happen next. Moore said the family considered Katherine’s wishes regarding burial or cremation.

 “He needs a place where I know where he’s at and where Katherine can know where he’s at,” Moore said. “She said, ‘I want my dad buried,’ – so they decided on that.”

Moore described her ex-husband as a giving man.

“He was the type of person that would drop everything to help somebody, and most of the time he never got anything back in return,” she said. “We always did what we could and always what we thought was right.”

She said Anthony continues to give, even in death. The family decided to donate his organs, which would help seven people, she said. Also donated was his O-negative blood.

People with O-negative blood are called universal donors because the blood can be donated to anyone in an emergency.

Taking a break from the hospital Monday afternoon, Moore sat in a hotel room with her daughter, watching cartoons. On a nearby table sat photos of Anthony. Some of them showed his teenage years, but most showed him with his daughters

In one, he stood next to his daughters and held up a turtle, a prize catch from an afternoon spent outdoors, one of the places he loved to be most.