A long-running dispute over a shared driveway in rural Halifax County, Virginia, erupted into deadly violence on July 3, 2002. Neighbors had argued for years about maintenance of a common road. On that afternoon, Thomas Wesley Cole, 64, and his brother Walter Stanley Cole were driving along the contested driveway when neighbor James Bryant Hudson used his truck to block their path. After a brief verbal exchange Hudson fetched a 12-gauge shotgun and opened fire. Walter was shot in the passenger seat and Thomas ran, but was killed in a nearby ditch.

The attack continued when Hudson went to Thomas Cole’s home and shot Thomas’s wife, Patsy Ayers Cole, while she tended her garden. Authorities arrested Hudson the next day after a manhunt. Did anyone in the area know about the driveway dispute or notice tensions between the families before July 3, 2002?