Before Va. Rampage, Mother Feared Son Would Kill Self

Law enforcement sources also revealed yesterday that the Prices made efforts to keep Cheatham away from their home Sunday morning. When Cheatham phoned the Great Falls house, the Prices saw his number on the caller ID and decided not to answer. At some point, investigators said, Janina Price called Cheatham back and told him that it was a day for family and that a visit would not be welcome. The slayings occurred a short time later.

Hicks, a former prosecutor for Falls Church, declined to discuss what had, by Sheila Cheatham's account, so agitated her son. He said that the matter did not involve drugs and that it was not nearly as serious as Nathan Cheatham apparently believed it to be. He also said Adam Price knew the details of Cheatham's difficulties and shared them with his mother.

Cheatham had several brushes with the law in recent years and spent several months in jail after 2001 convictions for assault and battery, carrying a concealed weapon and escape, court records show.

In March 2002, Cheatham was charged with cocaine possession in Fairfax County. At the time, he was unemployed and living with his mother. He had recently left a job he had held for a few months at a Chicken Out Rotisserie restaurant.

Cheatham pleaded guilty to the possession charge, but a judge agreed to defer a final disposition while Cheatham completed two years of supervised probation, drug treatment and screenings, and 120 hours of community service.

In November 2004, probation officer Sheila W. Ellis wrote to the court that Cheatham "fully complied" with conditions of his probation and never tested positive for drug use during random screens.

"We are happy to report that the subject did so well at his community service placement that he was hired as a paid employee," Ellis wrote. The charge was dismissed last December. Court records indicate Cheatham was hired at Claude Moore Colonial Farm, a privately operated history museum in the National Park Service near his McLean home. The farm is closed until April.

Hicks said he remembered Cheatham as a decent but troubled young man. "It was obvious he had some pretty serious emotional problems," the lawyer said.

He also recalled that Cheatham was extremely close to his mother. "The boy worshiped his mother," he said. "He worshiped the ground that she walked on."

News also emerged yesterday about Max, the Price family's black Labrador retriever mix, who was shot at the Great Falls home. He is expected to fully recover, said Michele Angel, a veterinarian at the Hope Center for Advanced Veterinary Medicine in Vienna.

Angel said Max was shot three times: in the head, the right foreleg and the chest. Now that the bullets have been removed and his wounds cleaned, Max is doing well and eating and drinking, she said. He might be released as soon as today.

"He's a big love with a great personality," she said. "Even though it was tragic, it just made my holiday . . . just that you can have something good come out of this."

Staff writers Michelle Boorstein, Karin Brulliard, Tom Jackman and Carol Morello and staff researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.