LOGAN, W.Va. — A Logan County delegate-elect says he believes he was lead to where he found himself in Logan back on Sunday when a young girl’s life was in danger.
“I do think that God intervened in that,” Ralph Rodighiero said four days after what could have been a deadly incident. “I hadn’t been down that street in months and it was meant for me to be there.”
Rodighiero and his son, who were driving around waiting for a pizza, were stopped at railroad tracks at Logan’s Dingess Street, waiting on a train, when they looked up to a surprise. At first, he said he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“This little girl, she appeared to be two or three years old, maybe 30 pounds, was hollering and crying for her mommy and was walking, like her shoulder was almost touching the train, as she was walking beside the train,” he explained on Thursday’s MetroNews “Talkline.”
The girl, according to Rodighiero and other witnesses, appeared to be looking for space to crawl under the slow-moving train to get across the tracks.
“I thought, ‘Surely, there’s a parent or an adult right by her,’ and as she came around the corner, there was no one. I immediately jumped out of the vehicle and went and scooped her up and the little thing was shaking,” Rodighiero said. “It was a heartbreaking situation.”
Soon after, according to MetroNews affiliate WVOW Radio, Logan Police Officer J.L. Sheppard arrived. Sheppard had been looking for the girl, age 4, after a call to 911 about a child standing by herself in the street in front of Logan City Hall.
Three adults drove up to the scene next in a Jeep. Among them, was the child’s father, identified as James Gollick, 40, of Logan, the child’s uncle, John Madison, 40, of Maryland, and the child’s mother.
Rodighiero said, while he was trying to make sure the child was okay, Gollick punched him in the face. Gollick was later charged with battery and released on $3,500 bond.
Madison was charged with child neglect creating risk of injury because he was supposed to be caring for the girl.
He told police he had left her unattended in a vehicle while he visited a friend and the girl got out of the car and walked away from it on her own. Madison was being held in the Southwestern Regional Jail.
Despite the black eye that came from the punch, Rodighiero said he would do the same thing again.
“I don’t know if it’s as a parent or instinct or just your morals of a human being, you shouldn’t even have to think to act when you see a child or elder person or anybody that’s in a situation like that,” he said. “You’ve got to help.