HOPEWELL, Va. -- Family members say the man accused of stabbing his daughter’s boyfriend before he was fatally shot by a police officer in a Hopewell parking lot Sunday night had been distraught about his wife’s death.
“My sister was upset," Boyd Ballard’s son Scott Wiseman said. " She was crying saying dad was dead and her boyfriend had to go to the hospital with his guts hanging out.”
Wiseman described the moment he learned his father had been shot by a Hopewell police after attacking his sister, Alexis Wiseman’s, boyfriend.
“He has been so emotionally distraught,” Wiseman explained.
Boyd Ballard
It happened outside 61-year-old Boyd Ballard’s Twin Rivers townhome Sunday after police said he refused to drop his weapon after allegedly stabbing Cyle Cawthon in the home they all shared on the same afternoon they were supposed to be paying tribute to Ballard’s late wife.
“Yesterday was my mom's memorial services,” Wiseman said. “He just missed her all the time. He just wanted to be with her -- that's all he ever wanted -- and I guess when he snapped he was able to find a way to be with her."
Robert Williams said his brother, Cyle, who was holding his infant son, was confronted by the emotional Ballard, because he was worried they were going to be late for the memorial service. A verbal argument turned physical with his grandchildren and daughter witnessing the violence.
Cyle Cawthon
“He grabbed two large butcher knives off of the counter and chased him outside and that’s where he stabbed my brother,” Williams said.
Williams said Ballard then smashed his wife’s urn before police said he asked the officer to shoot him.
Cyles’s family said it’s time to come together for Alexis who has now lost both parents and is at the bedside of her hospitalized boyfriend.
“We were raised that a family is a family regardless of the circumstances. Right now Alexis is the biggest loser in this whole entire situation,” said Williams. “We feel like it’s very important for us as a whole to come together and become one and support each other right now because it’s not about who did what to who, it’s about the loss that the grandkids that Alexis is dealing with and pain and suffering that my brother is having to go through. They are all victims and there’s no reason to be mad at one person or the other.”
Wiseman said he wishes he could have been there.
“If I could change anything it would have been to have been in Hopewell so I could have stopped this so no one would be hurt and he wouldn't be dead,” said Wiseman.
