THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, February 23, 1996 TAG: 9602230489
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ROBERT LITTLE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: POWHATAN LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
A local headline betrays the area's everyday nature. ``Local woman bitten by dog, starts shots,'' reads this week's Powhatan Today.
But the county weekly went to press before a confessed murderer serving eight life terms climbed out of a nearby maximum security prison and vanished into the foggy suburbia.
Powhatan County's most remarkable feature is usually its pastoral serenity. On Thursday, it was the uniformed guards surveying every other intersection with rifles and shotguns.
The Powhatan Correctional Center, while a dominant force in the local economy, is still just an inconspicuous curiosity most days.
On Wednesday, it spat venom into the community.
Thirteen-year-old Deborah Burkhardt slept with her mother.
``I was afraid he'd be out in the woods somewhere,'' she said. ``Everyone was talking about it at school. Some of the kids were scared - and some thought they would find him and beat him up.''
But people in Powhatan, Goochland and Louisa counties - the rural outskirts west of Richmond - took a rather casual approach to the thought of a killer in their midst. Most seemed more bothered by the hype than the hunt.
``We haven't had a breakout in years, except from Beaumont, the juvenile home. They bust out of there all the time, but nobody'll talk about it,'' said a shopkeeper along Route 60. He didn't want to give his name at the risk of sounding like a critic. ``Those guys are all my buddies up there,'' he said. ``They do a good job. Be sure and put that in the paper.''
The spot where officers nabbed convicted murderer Goeffrey Alan Ward is about 20 miles north of the prison, straight up Route 522 near the highway to Charlottesville.
People in the Louisa County pit stop of Gum Spring never worried that Ward would get that far, or that he could cross the long, narrow bridge over the James River without being seen or falling in. And by the time they realized he could, the place was teeming with cops.
Bob Parrish, owner of Parrish's Grocery at the corner of Routes 522 and 250, was installing a stove in his house behind the store when the police swarmed in about noon.
``It was within minutes, they had like 50 to 75 people, standing everywhere and some kind of dogs sniffing around,'' Parrish said. ``They looked in the church, and around here - I think they looked in everything. Then, all of a sudden, they all just left. They weren't wasting any time.''
Was he frightened? ``Not with all those people around.''
Officers nabbed Ward in the woods behind the Gum Spring Medical Center, a few hundred yards down the road. When an armed posse flooded the center's parking lot, office manager Joyce Haden locked the doors and holed up.
``The patients just stared out the window watching, wondering what was going to happen,'' said Haden, whose husband is a physician at the center.
``I think they were scared. You don't usually go to the doctor and have anything like that happen.
``But they swooped in and got him and then they left. Now it's just the reporters and the camera people.''
KEYWORDS: ESCAPED PRISONERS MURDER RAPE by CNB