Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 28, 1994 TAG: 9402280080
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LON WAGNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Ruhl was in very critical condition Sunday night in the neurotrauma intensive care unit at Roanoke Memorial Hospital. He was laid up, holding onto life, in a strange hospital, hundreds of miles from his home, because he tried to end a shooting spree.
Ruhl, a Pennsylvania truck driver, knew there was danger. He had just watched Elbert L. Goodwin shoot a truck stop clerk twice in the chest with a .38-caliber pistol. As Goodwin tried to leave, Ruhl stepped in with the statement that today must be echoing in his family's ears: "You're not going anywhere."
Goodwin shot him in the neck.
Why did Ruhl step in? his family must be wondering. Some people, pushed by fate into the middle of an extraordinary event, react heroically. They try to help, or make sure justice is done.
"I think he was trying to be a good Samaritan," said Ron Hamlin, an investigator with the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office. "That's what he thought he was doing."
Put in Ruhl's shoes Saturday night, many people would have hidden until Goodwin was gone. And who could blame them?
An east Tennessee trucker was at the Lancer Truck Stop when Goodwin and the clerk, Sandra K. Brown, began arguing. But he had no way of knowing the argument would spawn gunshots. He continued on to Buena Vista, made his delivery, and discovered on his trip back down Interstate 81 how narrowly he had missed the shooting.
Ernest Livesay saw blue lights flashing, so he stopped again at the truck stop. When he returned safely to his wife on Sunday, Livesay wondered if he would have stepped in if Goodwin had pulled the gun before he left.
He didn't know.
No one knows if he's a hero until the mayhem starts. Then, events flash past too quickly to make a conscious decision. Heroics are instinctive.
Ruhl's a hero.
Staff writer Todd Jackson contributed to this report.
by CNB