Game postponed due to threats
By David Williams
Published in News on October 15, 2004 3:04 PM
One of Wayne County’s biggest football games of the year that was scheduled for tonight has been postponed due to threats of violence, according to school officials. School officials said the threats did not come from students, but from outside the schools.
Wayne County public schools’ athletics director, Dean Sauls, said today that the football game between Goldsboro High School and Eastern Wayne High School has been postponed until 1 p.m. Saturday. The game will be played in a closed stadium — no students, parents or fans will be allowed inside Cougar Field. Only the media will be admitted to the game.
Sauls said school officials had heard reports that “sections of the city and county” had made threats of violence that were to be carried out at the game Friday night. Sauls stressed that the information had nothing to do with students from either school.
When asked if the violence was gang-related, Sauls said, “We don’t use that word.”
Violence erupted at a Goldsboro High School football game two years ago, when two people at the Kinston-Goldsboro game were involved in a shooting. Neither individual was a student, and one of them was wounded.
Sauls said the Wayne County schools superintendent, Dr. Steven Taylor, was involved in the decision, as well as Goldsboro High School Principal Pat Burden, Eastern Wayne High School Principal Morris Kornegay, Goldsboro High School Athletics Director Randy Jordan and Eastern Wayne High School Athletics Director Robert Peele.
Sauls said that Taylor had said “I couldn’t live with myself if something happened at that game tonight.”
Revised at 4:05 pm on Friday, October 15, 2004