Man, 75, dies after reporting robbery

Detectives trace motorist’s route to town

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Billy Gene Gurley, 75, drove into the parking lot of his dentist’s office along Route 5 at about 1 p.m. that day, and reported the holdup before he began suffering chest pains and was taken from there to nearby St. Mary’s Hospital. He was pronounced dead a short time later.

Gurley said that he had been robbed at gunpoint by a male wearing a hooded sweatshirt, according to detectives who followed up their initial investigation with an attempt this week to retrace Gurley’s path to town from his Town Creek Manor neighborhood.

‘‘He had a dentist appointment. That’s why he was there,” Gurley’s daughter, Robin Connelly, said Monday at the doorway of the family home.

Gurley, who was retired from careers with the Navy and DynCorp but still doing part-time work, had no visible physical injuries, police said, and the state medical examiner’s office said Monday that findings from an autopsy have not been completed.

‘‘We’re looking at the timeline, prior to when he arrived at the dentist’s office,” Lt. Rick Burris of the Bureau of Criminal Investigations said at his office. ‘‘We’re trying to determine at this point if something did occur, and if it did, where.”

Gurley made his report of the crime when he arrived at the offices of dentist James Dabbs.

‘‘We had a couple patients who saw him pull into the parking lot,” Dabbs said. ‘‘He rolled down his window and asked one of our patients for help.”

A call to 911 brought a quick response by Maryland State Police and St. Mary’s sheriff’s deputies, soon accompanied by a St. Mary’s Advanced Life-Support vehicle.

Gurley was able to get out of his sedan and take a seat in the medic service’s vehicle, and Dabbs said he assured Gurley that the office’s staff would watch his car for him.

Before Gurley was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, he reiterated his brief account of the robbery to a law officer, Burris said. ‘‘We spoke briefly with him,” the lieutenant said, ‘‘at the scene.”

The lieutenant declined to say if there was evidence that anything had been taken from Gurley.

At the family’s home, Connelly said her father’s Navy service brought him to Patuxent River Naval Air Station from his native state of Tennessee.

‘‘The Navy brought him here, and he lived here most of the time. He’s been affiliated with the base for a long time,” according to Connelly, the younger of her parents’ two daughters.

‘‘He was the kind of person who would do anything for you,” Connelly said of her father. ‘‘If you ever needed anything, he would be there for you. He was someone you could always depend on.”

Gurley enjoyed hunting, his daughter said, and he served on the board of directors of the Mattapany Rod and Gun Club.

‘‘He’s been my patient for many, many years,” Dabbs said Monday at his office. ‘‘He was a very nice gentleman.”