A Metropolitan Police Department (web|news) officer is in jail facing charges of attempted rape, assault and abduction after police said they caught him going after his former girlfriend.

Officer Kelvin Barksdale, a tremendously popular patrol officer on Capitol Hill, is held without bond in the Prince William County (web|news) jail. Many people expressed shock at the news of his arrest, while others who witnesses the attack, including a Virginia police officer who helped stop it, said it could have been worse.

"I had pulled up at that intersection, Williamstown Drive and Old Triangle and heard all the commotion, all the screaming and yelling." A woman was fighting for her life when Dumfries police detective Mark McCoy jumped out to help. He saw a man, allegedly Barksdale, who is accused of trying to abduct his former girlfriend at gunpoint, possibly using his service weapon.

"Take her to the wooded area over here where he made the threats to kill her and her family, her children." Neighbors credited detective McCoy and others for interrupting the attack and perhaps saving the woman's life. She reportedly had ended a personal relationship with Barksdale a few days earlier.

"I mean, come on. He is a police officer. He should know better than that.," neighbor Dorothy Dye said.

44-year-old Barksdale is a much decorated, veteran officer based out of the First District Police Station. He's well-known and well-liked as a beat cop in Capitol Hill neighborhoods. It was his own department who helped Dumfries Police take him into custody. "They contacted him and at some point encouraged him to come down and turn himself in," McCoy said.

Witnesses said there was such rage involved in the assault, at first they thought the man was a stranger, not someone who could have ever cared about the person he was attacking. "There are crazy people out there in the world who don't have their head on straight. They're in law enforcement and politics and school and everywhere," neighbor Lakisha Ferguson said.

Officer Barksdale will stay behind bars until his hearing at the end of August. Meantime, he's on administrative leave from the Metropolitan Police Department.