By C1 Staff
YORKTOWN, Texas — A corrections officer who was attacked while working as a firefighter is ready to get back on the job.
The Victoria Advocate reports that Brian Smolik, who is a corrections officer with the Stevenson Unit in Cuero and also works with the Yorktown Volunteer Fire Department, was stabbed while responding to a truck fire.
At the scene, he found a man burning brush, a couch and a city-issued trash bun in front of his home, who was trying to stop firefighters from putting out the blaze.
“I thought he had punched me in the stomach,” Smolik recalled about the man, Kirk Engle, who lunged at him. It wasn’t until he looked at his hands, which were covered in blood, that he realized he had been stabbed.
Smolik suffered a 2-inch stab into his lower abdomen, which put him off both of his jobs until his complete recovery.
After his arrest, Engle told officers he had intentionally set the fire with the hopes of stabbing the Yorktown Police Chief Paul Campos because he wanted to return to jail.
The case remains under investigation.
Smolik doesn’t hold any hard feelings against Engle.
“I’m not really upset with anybody,” he said. “The way I see it is that he could have done something else if he wanted to go to jail. We weren’t there to tell him that he can’t set his stuff on fire. We were there to do our job to put the fire out.”