Mental health struggles and Marine Corps celebration end in a tragic hail of bullets in Waldport

 

By GARRET JAROS/YachatsNews

WALDPORT – What began Sunday afternoon as a private celebration to honor the U.S. Marine Corps ended tragically for a Waldport woman with mental health issues after she confronted and then was shot and killed by a Lincoln County Sheriff’s deputy.

Virginia L. Morris, 38, a disabled Marine Corps veteran, posted multiple times on social media before picking up what a neighbor described as an AK-47 assault rifle and began yelling and firing off shots in Waldport’s Township 13 neighborhood.

Law enforcement officials have released only a few details about the incident, which the sheriff’s office said started about 7:40 p.m. Sunday and involved “a subject firing a rifle” from a house at 1015 S.E. Rolph Court.

On social media Sunday, Morris shared photos of her time in the service and wrote “Happy 249^th Birthday Marines.” Then came a video entitled “Happy Birthday Devil Dogs” where she wore a pink, spaghetti-strap dress while speaking directly to the camera to honor the corps and its first female marine.

Following posts showed her preparing to drink champagne and open a bottle of scotch. Then came one of her drinking a glass of champagne and smoking something hand-rolled in cigar-like paper. Then at approximately 4:30 p.m. came a final and ominous post.

“When I die at the hands of the Lincoln county police … know I’ve called them for help …” But they believed the trespassers, she went on to say about a past incident, showing up “4 cars deep and guns drawn from a different lie.”

Shortly after that post, neighbors called 9-1-1 to report the sound of gunshots.

Beyond the bullet holes — seven or more through Morris’ front window — along with the glass shattered from the top of her storm door, her house seemed eerily serene Monday. Several empty wrappers from compression bandages were strewn on the lawn. A couple spots of blood stained the cement near the front door. A runaway strip of yellow police tape lay in a neighbor’s yard.

A neighbor, who asked not to be named, described how events unfolded Sunday night on Rolph Court. He was at work in Newport when his girlfriend called from their home next door. He in turned called the sheriff’s office. While he was on the phone with them, there were five more shots, he told YachatsNews.

 

Their doorbell camera showed Morris in the front yard with what he believes was an AK-47 assault rifle he had seen her pacing with months before, but thought deputies had taken away.

“She was screaming that she was going to kill ‘All you mother f—–s!’ and stuff like that,” he said.

The camera showed her cocking the gun and starting to fire before she was fired upon by law enforcement, he said.

In the past, the neighbor said Morris would walk around her home screaming for days on end and waving guns.

“She would scream ‘I have a 7.62 for you mother f—–s!’” he said. And it only got worse, he said, describing Morris’ accusations of spying from their bedroom. “… but instead she was watching us in our bed. It was horrifying. We’ve been basically living in fear for three years.”

He said the sheriff’s deputies knew her “very well” from incidents he had documented with them since he moved into the neighborhood.

“Like when I had issues with her leaving threatening letters on my door and screaming in our windows at night,” he said. “If our windows were open, she would come up and scream in them.”

When he mowed his lawn, she would come out and scream at him for three or four hours, he said. He asked the township’s homeowners association to help deal with it without success. Before he moved in, there was an incident where Morris disputed where the fence was built between her and his landlord’s property, so she grabbed a saw and cut it down.

Tuesday night the sheriff’s office said the first person on the scene was Deputy Benjamin Cloud, an 11-year veteran of the department.

The sheriff’s office was asked to do a welfare check at Morris’ home about three hours before the incident. In a news release early Monday, they said after neighbors reported hearing shots, Cloud arrived and “took up an observation position south of the residence.” And that the “subject walked out of the residence with a firearm and was ultimately shot by the deputy.”

Morris died enroute to Samaritan Pacific Communities Hospital in Newport, according to the release.

The sheriff’s office said Tuesday that Cloud has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation into the use of deadly force, as is the department’s policy.

The sheriff’s office activated the county’s major crimes team after the shooting and Lincoln City police detectives are leading the investigation with assistance from the sheriff’s office, Newport Police Department, and Oregon State Police. Corvallis Police Department officers assisted with processing the shooting scene throughout Sunday night.

 

Four years in Marine Corps

According to her Facebook profile, Morris graduated from her hometown high school in Amery, Wis. in 2004. She served in the U.S. Marine Corp from 2005 to 2009 where she worked as a helicopter hydraulic and pneumatic mechanic.

“In laymen’s terms, I made helicopters fly,” she said in her last Facebook video.

She wrote that she had studied geology at the University of Arkansas. And she listed her gender as “Asegi Udanto,” which in the Cherokee language refers to people who fall outside of men’s and women’s roles, or mixes those roles.

Several other neighbors who live on the quiet cul-de-sac of well-kept lawns and towering trees on Rolph Court described how events unfolded for them Sunday. And they shared what they knew about the troubled woman who moved to Waldport and purchased her home in 2021 through what they believe was a program for disabled veterans.

A retired Navy veteran who lives across the street from Morris and also asked not to be named was in her kitchen when she heard the unmistakable sound of gunshots.

“I heard like 10 shots,” she said. “But later I was told there were 14. The problem at the time was I did not know who was shooting whom.”

Neighbors were told by the teams of arriving law enforcement to stay inside.

Another neighbor, Steve Newton, who lives just around the corner from Rolph Court, said the gunfire rattled the windows of his house.

“You heard bang, bang and then all of a sudden you heard bang, bang, bang, bang, bang … After that I heard nothing.”

Newton described Morris as a disabled veteran who displayed “extreme mental problems” the few times they interacted. Newton said he donated a U.S. flag to Township 13 that he raises on a flagpole near the community’s entrance. It had been one of his father’s two burial flags.

“Well, she decided that was wrong so one day she went by and turned the flag upside down,” Newton said. “And that upset me. And nobody knew who did it. It happened two or three times before the HOA president at the time found out who it was. We locked it in place after that.”

An upside down flag can symbolize distress, especially during wartime.

“But she was not a very nice person,” Newton said. “She would walk by my house to get the mail and I would go ‘Good afternoon’ and she would respond ‘F— you!’ And if you went up to her she would say ‘Look, I’m loaded, I am carrying,’ and I was … yeah, not a nice lady.”

Morris always carried a sidearm that was visible and walked with her focus straight ahead, Newton added, with no motion, no fluctuation and seemingly no emotion. “It was just a zombie walking,” he said.

When he heard the gunfire, he knew it had to be Morris.

“There’s only one person on this whole road that I would be afraid of,” Newton said. “And that would have been the only one to fire those shots. It was a bad situation the whole way around. The poor sheriff (deputy) had to do what he had to do. I mean, somebody comes at you with a rifle …”

Other neighbors who spoke to YachatsNews also reported seeing Morris carrying a handgun tucked into her shirt at all times. And said they heard second-hand of her conflicts with neighbors.

Mark Young, who lives with his girlfriend, Alicia Bond, a house away from Morris’ home, said he arrived home around 3:30 p.m. Sunday and took his dog for walk.

“And as I was coming back, I heard somebody screaming,” Young said. “I didn’t think too much of it. Then a little while later Alicia got home and we went outside again, out back of our house to smoke a cigarette and heard more screaming and yelling. Just sounded like a woman yelling obscenities. ‘F-this!’ Just yelling, going to her back door then front door — moving back and forth.”

They called 9-1-1 and were told by a deputy that they had been called out to deal with past incidents with Morris, that she was a veteran suffering from PTSD and that Veteran’s Day may have triggered her, Young and Bond said. The deputy told them to ignore it, they said. That was around 4:30 p.m.

“So didn’t think anything of it,” Young said. “Everybody has bad days. Maybe she’s just having an episode.”

But a couple of hours later, Young said they heard a loud “pop!” Then the deputy called them back to ask if they had heard anything. They said they had. Shortly after that, they said they heard three more.

“And we knew at that point — those were gunshots,” Young said. “And we knew things were starting to get out of control. So Alicia called 911 again and they were very quick with her on the phone and said ‘Officers were on the way.’ ”

At that point, the couple say they knew things were getting “a little crazy” and went to talk with neighbors across Southwest Park Drive, who had also gone outside to see what was going on. It was about then that Cloud arrived, parked his car near the entrance to Township 13 and walked toward Rolph Court with an assault rifle hanging barrel down in front of him.

They had brief conversation with the deputy who instructed them to go back inside their house and lock the doors. It was sometime between 7:30 and 8 p.m.

They went inside, but being curious went out back again.

“And then all of a sudden you hear ‘Drop your weapon!’ and then maybe two seconds after that — bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,” Young said.

It sounded like an assault rifle, the couple said, but different from the one they had heard earlier. Bond counted 10 shots. They estimate they were 50 feet away but could feel the concussion of the shots. They ran back in the house and ducked to the floor for cover.

“And then I think we heard the officer say ‘Show me your hands’ and then just silence after that,” Young said.

Young, Bond and Newton said more police than any of them had ever seen arrived and set up at the entrance to Rolph Court.

“The whole thing is very sad,” Young said. “You can’t get into somebody’s head. You want to like go and check on her and see if she is okay. But again, if somebody’s got a gun and isn’t right in the head … I don’t mean to speculate but you add possibly drugs or alcohol on top of that and it’s a bad combination.”

• Garret Jaros is YachatsNews’ full-time reporter and can be reached at GJaros@YachatsNews.com