Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 21, 1994 TAG: 9412210079
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Long
An itch underneath an Ace bandage, which covers the gauze wrapping stitches over a 5-inch, L-shaped knife wound in his arm that went almost to the bone in some places and through muscle in others.
And an itch to get back to the job where he received the injury less than a week ago.
Goad, 22, a rookie Pulaski police officer, was stabbed in the inner right forearm and the back of his head while answering a call for help at a Fourth Street apartment early last Thursday morning. A woman had called 911 to report that her ex-boyfriend was trying to break into her apartment.
As much as Goad wants to get back to work, those who knew him as a boy growing up in Draper or a football player at Pulaski County High School have other ideas.
"You're quitting," his wife, Angie, told him the morning after the attack.
"John Goad, I want you to change jobs now," a motorist yelled Monday as she passed by the municipal building that houses the Police Department. "I go out of town for two days and you're all over the newspapers."
But Goad says being a police officer is his chosen career and he plans to stick with it. He'll have a better idea by the end of the week how quickly he'll be able to go back to full duty. He hopes to begin light duty work soon.
Kevin Bradley May, 29, of Draper, has been charged with malicious wounding of a police officer, resisting arrest and breaking and entering with intent to commit a felony. He was arraigned on the charges Monday, telling General District Judge Ed Turner he had hired his own lawyer, David Skewes of Dublin.
Leaving the county courthouse Monday, Goad reached the doors just as some of May's family members were entering. Goad held the door open for them.
It's a gesture you might not expect. But Pulaski Police Commander Ed Hogston notes that Goad carries no bitterness about the attack. Hogston is impressed that after he was stabbed, Goad still tried to help other officers arrest May.
Goad prefers to downplay his role - crediting longer-tenured officers for their assistance and quick-thinking in bringing the incident to an end. Anything he did after being stabbed was just passing the time until the rescue squad came, said Goad, who joined the department in March.
Goad admits an initial reluctance to speaking publicly about the stabbing. But he knows, too, that officer safety has become a hot topic in the New River Valley as two law enforcement officers have died since September while on the job.
"The job we do - it makes us a target. Someone's committing a crime. We're trying to stop it. We interfere, so we're the targets now."
Even though he grew up here, Goad says, "I deal with hundreds of people weekly ... that I don't know."
In his nine months with the police force, Goad had responded to numerous domestic dispute calls, but "never one this violent."
Goad and other officers were shoving at an exterior door to the building, trying to apprehend the man before he could break through an apartment door to reach his ex-girlfriend, her young son and a friend.
But the man was shoving back, apparently using a wall as leverage.
"Basically, our entire intention was to go through and Mace him," Goad said.
Goad said he and other officers didn't know the man was armed.
As the officers broke through the door, the Mace didn't work. Goad felt something strike him in the arm.
"The knife was razor-sharp," Goad recalled, and it pierced through his long-sleeve uniform shirt. "I felt it hit. I didn't really realize I'd been cut," he said.
Looking up, he saw the knife coming again. He instinctively ducked and the knife hit him again, this time on the back of his head.
When Goad came out the door, the man pushed it closed.
"I was yelling, 'He's got a knife. He cut me,'" Goad recalled.
He watched as other officers continued their efforts to take the man into custody, breaking out a picture window to get the three people out of the apartment just before the man made it through the apartment door.
So how's Goad's wife, Angie, handling things?
"Better now," he smiles.
"My first thought was her. She's four months pregnant. My first thought was she was going to freak," he said.
So, Goad had a fellow officer call her, toning down the seriousness of the injuries that caused him to lose more than a pint of blood. She called the hospital and Goad was wheeled over to talk to her on the phone, assuring her he was OK and there was no need for her to come to the hospital until later that morning.
"To me, it wasn't as bad as a lot of people were trying to make it seem," Goad said. Departments from across the New River Valley called him in the hospital or sent officers by to wish him well.
Three or four days later, the calls of concern continued to pour in.
"I guess it just finally dawned on her how serious it could have been," Goad said.
The Goads are practically still newlyweds, married for a year and a half. He said her remark urging him to quit was more of a joke than an order.
"She knew when we met this is what I wanted to do," Goad said.
"She's OK with it now," he said. But for the first few days after the attack, Angie Goad "didn't want me to be out of her sight." She even insisted he open all his Christmas presents early, he smiled.
by CNB