By BILL McKELWAY
Richmond Times-Dispatch Staff Writer

A gas station manager said this morning that he got a clear look at a man with a gun more than an hour before the man showed up yesterday at the University of Richmond, prompting a lock down.

Warren McKenna had an immediate reaction:

"We laughed our (rear-ends) off," he said.

McKenna said the figure who walked through the Village Exxon about 1 p.m. yesterday was so bizarre looking that he and employees stopped in their tracks.

"We figured it was some fraternity prank, that they made some guy stick cotton balls on his face like a beard."

And when the figure moved away so that McKenna could see the back of his brown windbreaker and the word "Sheriff," McKenna said, "We figured maybe he was undercover working drugs around here."

McKenna's station at Three Chopt Road and Patterson Avenue is a crossroads that attracts the well-heeled as well as the homeless.

But McKenna said he clearly saw a gun and holster on the man's left hip. His face was covered in a goofy beard, a "bucket hat" with medallions was pulled down over his face, and he wore sunglasses.

"He stopped for a drink from the machine outside and kept walking," McKenna said. "At first when he was farther away we thought he was an old man, but when he got closer you could see he was much younger."

McKenna said in retrospect that he should have called police and this morning he did so.

"That was an hour ago and nobody's come by yet," he said this morning at 9:30.

Police are looking for a man in his mid-20s with close-cropped blond hair, who is about five feet 11 inches tall. Police recovered a part of the beard outside Boatwright Library and gave it to tracking dogs to try to follow the scent.

Police were still searching for the man, who may be homeless, this morning.