River Nevaeh Goddard, Nonbinary 17-Year-Old With a "Cuddly Nature" Found Dead
This article contains descriptions of fatal violence against a nonbinary person.
River Nevaeh Goddard, a nonbinary 17-year-old, was found dead in their boyfriend’s house earlier this month. Goddard’s boyfriend, 20-year-old Shane Curry, was charged in connection with their death after telling police that he had stabbed them with a sword. According to Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents, Goddard was nonbinary and used she and they pronouns.
On April 3, 2024, police were called to Curry’s home in Stow, Massachusetts for a well-being check, per a press release from Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office obtained by local outlet MassLive. Although Curry stopped officers from coming inside the home for nearly two hours, when police finally entered, they found Goddard dead inside and arrested Curry, taking him to a local hospital for evaluation. Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents reports that the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children had listed them as a missing child since April 2022, when Goddard was 15.
According to court documents provided to Boston 25 News, Curry told officers that he and Goddard had been fighting and he wanted to talk to her about their alleged “cheating and addiction.” According to the documents, he admitted to stabbing Goddard multiple times with a sword that police later recovered in his bedroom.
“The bruises aren’t working… hitting her, that’s not working, so okay, I have to knife her, so I do,” Curry reportedly told police.
The 20-year-old was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon causing serious bodily injury and assault and battery on a family or household member. According to court documents, Curry also has an open case from June 2023 in which he is charged with strangulation or suffocation and assault and battery. CBS reports that he pleaded not guilty.
Goddard’s obituary remembers them for their “amazing, outgoing personality.”
“She was very creative and artistic, she loved to write her own music,” the obituary reads. “Her cuddly nature was only matched by her quick wit and goofiness.”
Goddard’s biological mother, Kristin Goddard, and her fiancée, Heather Coyne, told Boston 25 News that the teen was raised by their maternal grandfather, Michael Simmons, after Kristin gave birth to them while serving time in a Pennsylvania prison.
The couple described Goddard’s home environment with Simmons as “abusive,” noting that Goddard called Rhode Island’s Department for Children, Youth & Families (DCYF) herself at 14 years old and was taken into state custody. Kristin and Coyne added that Goddard lived with them for roughly six months before running away after the state’s DCYF requested that she receive “behavioral treatment” at a state facility.
“She was so full of life,” Coyne told Boston 25 News. “She was such an amazing spirit. She had such a genuine, pure soul.”
As a 2022 Human Rights Campaign (HRC) resource points out, queer and trans people are often disproportionately likely to have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) in their lifetimes. According to the 2015 United States Transgender Survey, more than half (54%) of all trans and nonbinary people have experienced IPV at some point. A 2017 CDC study found that trans high school-aged students reported higher levels of physical dating violence (26%) and dating sexual violence (23%), compared to the levels of physical (15%) and sexual (16%) dating violence reported by their cis peers. Meanwhile, another report published in the National Library of Medicine found that people from marginalized backgrounds with pre-existing social and economic vulnerabilities are at greater risk of experiencing IPV.
Also known to his friends and family as Lagend Billions, Arnold was 36 years old.
In an April 22 press release, GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis called on authority figures, from politicians to educational leaders to media workers, to do better when it comes to caring for and covering LGBTQ+ youth in the wake of Goddard’s death.
“Too often, young people, and LGBTQ youth are failed by adults and systems entrusted to protect them, and do not feel they have anywhere to turn in times of crisis,” Ellis said. “[...] River Nevaeh Goddard was failed in life, and it’s up to all of us to make sure we don’t fail them, or any other LGBTQ youth, now.”
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