Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 14, 1993 TAG: 9307140064
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RON BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Roanoke police said Jerry Alax Jones, 30, of Loudon Avenue was charged with malicious wounding after the 1:30 p.m. knife attack.
Russell Woodring, 8, and his mother, Kathleen, 37, were treated at Community Hospital of Roanoke Valley and released.
Jones, who is scheduled to go on trial next week on charges he punched a 16-year-old girl between the eyes at a bus stop in December, has previously been admitted to state mental hospitals, said Chief Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Betty Jo Anthony.
Jones was found not guilty by reason of insanity on a criminal charge in the mid-1980s, Anthony said. She could not determine the nature of that charge Tuesday afternoon.
A psychiatric evaluation on Jones was requested for his July 21 trial, but Anthony said she hasn't been notified of any possible insanity plea. Jones was declared competent to stand trial.
Kathleen Woodring said she was looking at purses in the store when she turned her back on her cart and walked about three steps from her son when she heard him scream.
She said it looked as if the man was shaking her son by the back of his neck.
"I didn't see the knife at first," she said.
Suddenly, the man started running, and Woodring chased him.
"Leave my baby alone," she remembered yelling.
The man turned, showed her the knife, then slashed at her face. In her panic, she said, she never felt the cut on her chin.
She ran back to her son and noticed he had a gash on his neck. That's when she started yelling for help.
"The guy's got a knife!" she remembered screaming. "The man's got a knife and he cut my baby."
She watched as the assailant ran across the store.
"Everybody was in shock," she said. "The guy took off."
Woodring's 11-year-old daughter, Jessica, led her mother toward the store's cash registers. Jessica encouraged her brother to be brave.
Anna Atwood, 36, another customer, was standing near the store's customer service area, when she noticed a lot of people running around. The man, later identified as the assailant, ran near Atwood's 2 1/2-year-old son, Derek, and tried to grab him by the arm.
"I told him to go help someone else," Atwood told the man, thinking he was a store employee.
Meanwhile, Kathleen and Russell Woodring were sitting on a bench awaiting the arrival of rescue workers. Russell had only one question.
"Am I going to die?" he kept asking the people around him. He could see his mother was injured. The blood was pouring from her chin, even though a stranger had offered her his T-shirt to stop her bleeding and the bleeding from her son's neck.
Rex Woodring, Kathleen's husband and Russell's father, said the attack on his son was a act of random violence and does not reflect badly on Roanoke. He said he's just thankful that his son was not seriously hurt.
The construction worker from Missouri had brought his family to Roanoke only two weeks ago.
"It could have happened anywhere," he said. "The guy apparently is a nut."
Staff writer Stephen Foster contributed information for this story.
by CNB