Updated: Police find victim’s car

AFTON – Authorities in Waynesboro found a stolen car Thursday belonging to a woman found stabbed to death in her Afton home.
The dark-green 1998 Chevrolet Malibu belonging to Opal Page, 73, was found in the 1000 block of B Street in Waynesboro, police said this evening. The discovery of the car came roughly a day after police discovered Page in a pool of blood inside her modest home in the 7200 block of Rockfish Valley Highway in Afton.
Capt. Ron Robertson said evidence shows Page was stabbed and that she fought her attacker. Her cause of death has not been released by state medical examiners. Investigators are interviewing neighbors this afternoon.
Robertson said Page missed a Wednesday lunch date with friends who did not immediately suspect danger. At about 6:30 p.m., neighbor Frank Armentrout called authorities when no contact could be made with his longtime friend.

“She’s the only real neighbor that we have here,” he said. “She was famous for her sitting with people during their special needs … It was nothing for her to spend a whole day sitting with people … for operations … at nursing homes.”

Authorities found Page in a pool of blood.

“I took one look,” Robertson said, and “told my guys to get out, this is beyond us.”

Virginia State Police forensics officers are assisting the sheriff’s department in the investigation.

“They have equipment that we don’t have,” Brooks said.

Page’s body was sent to a state medical examiner’s office in Richmond for an autopsy. Nelson County investigators have not examined a homicide since 2007, Brooks said, adding this case could be more challenging because of the missing car.

Armentrout told investigators he last saw Page’s car, with license plate No. YZR1900, leaving her home before 6 a.m., headed north on Va. 151. Authorities entered the car into a nationwide missing vehicle database.

Page had been a longtime teacher’s aide at the former Rockfish Valley Elementary School, working most often with kindergarten students, before working at Rockfish River Elementary School, where she continued to volunteer after retiring five years ago, said Principal Nita Hughes.

“She was just one of the most kind, gentle, caring people you’d ever meet,“ Hughes said. “A faithful employee.”

“She was just a family-type person,” Hughes said, a thought echoed throughout the day.

Page lived alone more than 20 years in her modest white, one-story house along the highway, but was active with friends and family.

“She was a jewel just like her name,” neighbor Linda Armentrout said. “It was all about family with Opal and on the holidays you saw her driveway full with all her family … She raised two fine boys who she thought the world of.”

Page likely would have attended a granddaughter’s graduation from James Madison University this weekend, friends said.

She loved baseball and supporting her children and grandchildren, Frank Armentrout said.

“This is a violation of everything she lived for,” said Linda Armentrout. “It’s a great loss for us but it’s a great jubilation in heaven for God has another warrior.”

Funeral arrangements will be made by Reynolds Hamrick Funeral Homes in Waynesboro.

Nelson County Times staff reporter Erin McGrath contributed to this report.