WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- The family of an apparently deranged gunman claimed they were rebuffed when they tried to have him committed a day before the massacre of four people, but hospital officials denied it Tuesday.
Michael Charles Hayes, 24, remained in critical condition Tuesday at North Carolina Baptist Hospital, where armed guards stand ready to serve him with two murder warrants when doctors allow. Sheriff Preston Oldham said further charges are pending.
Hayes killed four people and wounded five others in the Sunday night massacre. Three of his victims will be buried Wednesday and services for the fourth will be held a day later in hopes the man's wife, also wounded, will be able to attend.
Forsyth County deputies gunned down Hayes shortly before midnight Sunday. Authorities say Hayes, using a .22 caliber automatic rifle, ambushed his victims as they passed in front of his stepfather's moped shop.
Witnesses said Hayes behaved in an erratic manner all day Sunday before the rampage began. They said he ran into the road repeatedly to 'moon' passing cars and fired a high-powered rifle into the air for several hours.
Friends said Hayes was distraught because his wife, 8 months pregnant, had left him. They speculated he may have been using drugs, although there was no official confirmation of that.
'This went on all day,' said Adrian Hodges, owner of the Hickory Tree Texaco station near the scene of the shootings. 'He would run out into the street mooning everybody.
'The sheriff's department came two or three times and turned around and left,' said Hodges. 'His stepdad said they had tried to have him committed the night before.'
Hayes' stepfather, Garris Edwards, said the family was put off by officials at North Carolina Baptist Hospital when they sought to have him committed Saturday.
'I explained to them what the problem was -- he had gone off the loose end -- and the security people at the hospital said 'If the doctor says so, we can do something, but if the doctor says not to commit him then we cannot do anything about it. We have to let him go,'' Edwards told WSJS Radio.
'So we set up an appointment for Monday to cure the problem and it seems to me Monday was just a little bit late.'
Hospital officials Tuesday denied the family made any attempts to get psychiatric treatment for Hayes.
'Evidence from a very exhaustive investigation showed that medical personnel in the emergency room were never asked about involuntary commitment of this man,' said hospital spokesman Roger Rollman.
'A security official in the emergency room was asked, possibly by Edwards, what was the process for commitment. The security officer said he would have to ask the doctor. Records show that did not happen,' Rollman said.
Hayes, accompanied by two other people, arrived at the hospital emergency room at 9:20 p.m. Saturday and left about an hour later without being treated, Rollman said.
'The only thing we have any record of (Hayes) coming in Saturday for was an injury to a finger on his left hand,' said hospital spokesman Roger Rollman. 'Not only does the record not substantiate what he (Edwards) says, but the man didn't stay even for the treatment he came for.
'The orthopedic surgeon called to the emergency room to take care of the injury followed him out the emergency room door trying to convince him to come back and have it taken care of,' he said.
Rollman said he did not know why Hayes left.
'I'm told he was very insistent, very demanding, somewhat agitated ... not threatening in any way, either to himself or anyone else here,' he said.
Separate funeral services have been set for 2 p.m. Wednesday for Crystal Susan Cantrell, 16, of Winston-Salem; Melinda Yvonne Hayes, 21, of Lexington, N.C. (no relation to Michael Hayes); and Thomas Walter Nicholson, 24, of Winston-Salem.
Ronald Lee Hull, 32, of Winston-Salem will be buried Thursday. A spokesman for Vogel Funeral Home said the service was delayed so his wife, Darlene Welborn Hull, 29, could recover enough from her gunshot wounds to attend.
Cantrell, a student at Parkland High School, was described as a 'popular and very attractive' girl by a school spokesman. She was a member of the school's Dixie Deb dance drill team.
Melinda Hayes was a data entry operator for Integon. Nicholson was an employee of Golden Shamrock Auto Parts and Machine Shop. Hull worked for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.
Also wounded were Jeffrey Allen Parks, 28, of Winston-Salem; James Gray Boyd, 45, of Clemmons; Gregory Richard Tirrell, 18, of Winston-Salem and Claude D. Eagle Jr., of Winston-Salem.
