Witnesses Say They Scared Off Attacker, Aided Dying Stabbing Victim

Three days after they moved into their new apartment, Isaac and Malachi Bodden were standing outside when they heard their upstairs neighbor, .

“Stop stabbing me, stop stabbing me,” Ward was yelling just before 9 p.m. Friday, Isaac Bodden told Patch in an exclusive interview. 

Recognizing Ward’s voice, the brothers darted across the street into their apartment building in the 900 block of Redfield Road. They bounded up the stairs to the second floor, but Ward’s front door was locked.

Inside, Isaac Bodden said, —screamed again: “Stop stabbing me!”

Isaac said he ran outside, climbed up onto Ward’s balcony and entered his apartment. Malachi, 20, followed close behind.

Once inside, the brothers said they discovered a bloody trail , badly wounded and barely standing. Beside him, Isaac Bodden said, stood Donnell Graham, the main suspect in Ward’s murder.

“We saw Donnell and I looked at him square in the eye and I said, ‘Get the [expletive] out; What the [expletive] did you do?,’” Isaac Bodden, 22, told Patch on Monday. “And I didn’t pay any attention to him. I just went back to try and help Pat.”

, a 17-year-old who lives a street over in the 200 block of Fairwood Road, was arrested less than an hour later and has been . In Graham’s , unidentified witnesses said they saw Graham in Ward’s apartment.

The Boddens said they were the only people who saw Graham inside the apartment, but police will not confirm that they are the witnesses referenced in the charging documents.

The Bodden brothers told Patch that Graham fled the apartment as they turned to try to help Ward, who at first feared the men were more attackers. The Boddens said Ward had been leaning against a dresser before he trusted them to help him lay down.

“He said, ‘I’m dying, I’m dying,’” Isaac Bodden said. “I said, ‘No, Pat. You’re OK.’”

Malachi Bodden said he grabbed a nearby shirt and put it over the stab wound on Ward’s chest to try to slow the bleeding, but Ward could not catch his breath. Isaac Bodden said Ward had one wound in his chest, four or five in his back and three long cuts on the back of his head.

“[Again] he said, ‘I’m dying, I’m dying,’” Isaac Bodden said. “I said, ‘If you really believe you’re dying, and you believe in God, you better pray to Him right now.’"

The Bodden brothers said they each held Ward's hands until police arrived.

“He never hurt nobody, man,” Isaac Bodden said. “He definitely didn’t deserve this.”

It wasn’t the first time that night the Boddens had seen Graham. Just about an hour before, the 17-year-old who lives in the same complex had been inside their apartment.

“[Graham's] friends with everybody here” in the apartment complex, said David Bunner, a 58-year-old Florida man who has been visiting friends in the area. He was also standing outside the scene of the murder Friday. “We’d give [Graham] cigarettes when we had them. Or he’d give us cigarettes.”

Bunner has known Graham, who was released from a western Maryland juvenile facility May 2, longer than the Boddens have known him.

He said Graham had told him in late July that he was planning to steal a gun from Ward’s apartment.

“About two weeks before [the stabbing], he asked me where he could buy a gun. I said, ‘I ain’t giving you no gun. Are you crazy?’” Bunner said.

When word spread that Ward allegedly owned a handgun for personal protection, Bunner said the blind man became Graham’s target.

“Everybody knew [Ward] had that pistol up there,” Bunner said.

He said Graham had told him he was planning on robbing another house with the gun he was going to steal from Ward’s apartment. Bunner said he and his girlfriend walked away from him and told him to “stay away from me and don’t bother Pat.”

Bunner said he was drinking Long Island iced teas at  when he heard Ward was stabbed. He returned to Redfield Road immediately.

Malachi Bodden said  told him and his brother that Graham was inside his family’s apartment when he was arrested.

“The police had said he went back to his mom’s house,”  said. “And he was sitting at his house eating .”