NEWS

Police: Le Roy gunman shot neighbor in head, set fire

Jon Hand
@jonhand1

When Le Roy firefighter Joe Orlando pulled up to the burning home on Selden Road, he had no idea that the man who would later be accused of starting the blaze and fatally shooting his neighbor was about to turn the gun on him.

Kyle Johnson walks into Le Roy Town Court on Tuesday afternoon. He's accused of fatally shooting his neighbor, Norman Donald Bell.

Orlando said he and two other firefighters, the Le Roy fire chief and Bergen fire chief, heard three shots ring out in the early morning blackness — blasts that came from the driveway of the burning home and which he believes were most certainly meant for them.

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“We just heard 'boom, boom, boom,' and we got out of here,” Orlando said hours later, still shaken and looking over the 150-foot distance he estimated he stood from the shooter. “I thought I was dreaming. You don’t expect this. …

“He probably could have had us. He probably could have; it’s not that far.”

Genesee County Sheriff Gary Maha said the man who shot at firefighters, and who minutes earlier had pulled the trigger of the same shotgun, killing 69-year-old Norman Donald Ball while he slept in his bed, was Kyle Johnson, 53, of 7324 Selden Road.

Kyle G. Johnson

Johnson was charged with second-degree murder, third-degree arson, first-degree burglary and first-degree reckless endangerment, all felonies. He was arraigned by Le Roy Town Justice Michael T. Welch and is scheduled to return to court at 2 p.m. Friday for a preliminary hearing. He will be held in the Genesee County Jail until then.

Maha’s timeline of events shows Johnson went to Ball’s home at 7421 Selden Road about 3:50 a.m. He entered the home through an unlocked back door and went upstairs, where he found Ball’s roommate and inquired about Ball’s whereabouts.

Maha said the roommate told investigators that Johnson then went downstairs and he heard a “pop.”

When the roommate went downstairs, Johnson was gone and he found Ball on his bed, shot once in the head with a 12-gauge shotgun.

Norman Donald Ball

The roommate went next door — believed to be the attached apartment of the multi-unit farmhouse — where Ball’s son, Ryan, was sleeping along with Ball’s grandson, Mason, 1½, and they called 911.

After he left Ball’s home, Maha said, Johnson walked the quarter-mile back to his own home, which he is accused of then setting on fire.

Firefighters responding to the fire about 4:10 a.m. were on scene just a moment when they heard the shots, sending them fleeing in their vehicles up the road. The shots also woke neighbors Jon Marcello, his fiancée, Becky Spezzano, and the two young children in their home.

Marcello said he walked outside after hearing the gun blasts but was ordered back inside by a sheriff’s deputy who ran at him with his hand on the butt of his holstered gun. Marcello went back inside his home and took video recordings of the fire and Johnson.

He recorded Johnson pacing down Selden Road, shotgun in his hands and ignoring the orders of deputies to drop the gun and get down on the ground.

Marcello and sheriff’s officials said it was clear that Johnson wanted “suicide by cop.”

“He wanted them to shoot him. He wasn’t listening to them,” said Marcello, adding that Johnson has complained to him about a pending or recent divorce, and had hung a “No Trespassing” sign up in his yard to keep his ex-wife off the property.

Maha said Johnson has a history of mental illness, but would not elaborate, and said Johnson’s house was in foreclosure proceedings. He would not, however, speculate on a motive in the shooting.

Johnson made some statements to deputies initially but then requested a lawyer, Maha said.

In Marcello’s video, Johnson can be seen pausing for a long while in the road, staring in the direction of the sheriff’s deputy directing him to surrender. He then walks — left to right in the camera frame — back toward his home, pausing ominously in front of Marcello’s home, then moves back to his own driveway.

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Maha said Johnson at times would attack the SWAT vehicle on scene, and at one point told a deputy to shoot him in the head.

Spezzano said Johnson went from aggressiveness to sadness as the light of day illuminated what had happened.

“He was sobbing, just crying and crying and saying, ‘Oh, my house.’ I think it was all coming to him, what he had done.”

Eventually, Johnson was rushed by police and subdued without injury or shots being fired.

About a mile away, Ball’s family gathered throughout the four-hour ordeal, comforting one another and waiting for updates.

When Ryan and Mason met them, they were embraced and comforted. Mason was placed in the warmth of a car seat in a heated car.

Eventually the family returned to Ball’s home, where they later held hands and briefly prayed. Most declined to comment, other than to say Ball was a Vietnam veteran, worked construction and had four children.

Le Roy Second Assistant Fire Chief Tom Wood said his fellow firefighters were clearly shaken, and memories of the deaths of two West Webster firefighters on Christmas Eve 2012 rushed into their minds.

Two firefighters were killed that day when 62-year-old William Spengler set fire to his house on Lake Road and ambushed firefighters Michael Chiapperini, 43, and Tomasz Kaczowka, 19. Two other firefighters were injured in the standoff.

Woods said he considered the events in Webster deeply when they happened. But perhaps, he said, he never took them enough to heart.

“It probably didn't wake us up enough. We're just a bunch of country guys here; we don't know how to respond to something like this," Wood said, adding that counselors would be made available to members of his all-volunteer, 67-person department. “Your heart drops, it absolutely does. We need to start making sure everyone is all right.”

Wood said his firefighters had no indication they might be stepping into a volatile situation, although deputies were already on scene of the shooting a quarter-mile away.

Family members of the slain victim respond to the scene in Le Roy on Tuesday.

He and Maha said they would be reviewing the 911 calls and the communication between sheriff’s officials and fire officials to determine whether there were problems in notifying firefighters of the potential danger.

Maha said first responders did not know that the shooting and the fire were connected — until, that is, Johnson fired the shots at firefighters and the scene became a standoff.

Firefighters from several companies were positioned more than a mile up the road from the shooting, and Johnson’s house burned completely away to the smoldering, smoking shell of a basement. They returned only to put out the remnants of the blaze — after Johnson’s capture.

Orlando, the department’s fire safety officer, who has been in fire service for 37 years, acknowledged that he and his fellow firefighters were caught off-guard.

And he was plain in his answer to a reporter’s question: Do you consider yourself lucky?

“You ain’t kidding, man,” he said, and shook his head.

JHAND@Gannett.com

Includes reporting by staff writer Will Cleveland.