Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, May 3, 1994                   TAG: 9405030115
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: By KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium

W.VA. MAN FOUND GUILTY IN STABBING OF WOMAN

Arnold D. Martin, 27, of Keystone, W.Va., pleaded no contest last week in Montgomery County Circuit Court to a charge of unlawful wounding as a principle in the second degree.

The plea came as part of an agreement that reduced the original charge of malicious wounding.

Judge Ray Grubbs sentenced Martin to serve 12 months of a three-year prison sentence. After serving that time, Martin will be placed on probation for two years in West Virginia.

Barbara Whitehead of Giles County was stabbed in the leg on Dec. 22, 1990, as she was getting out of her van.

The man who attacked her then fled across the parking lot at the Market Place shopping center off U.S. 460.

Martin was charged with malicious wounding and was indicted by a grand jury on the charge in July 1991.

Skip Schwab, assistant commonwealth's attorney, told Grubbs that Martin was in the parking lot before the stabbing. Martin "knew and offered aid to the person who actually stabbed Mrs. Whitehead," Schwab said.

Martin would not plead guilty to being the person who actually stabbed Whitehead, Commonwealth's Attorney Phil Keith said Monday.

"He said there was another person who did it, and there is some evidence to back that up," Keith said.

Whitehead identified Martin as the person who stabbed her, but other witnesses gave varying descriptions of the man they say they saw stab her. Martin passed a lie detector test after his arrest. No second suspect has been charged with the stabbing although a man serving time for robbery was interviewed.

Keith said the range of punishment Martin could have received was the same, whether he pleaded guilty as a principle or an accomplice.

"The case had been dragged out so long, it needed to be disposed of for everybody's benefit," especially Whitehead's and other witnesses, Keith said. The case had been set for jury trial twice but was continued when Martin didn't appear.