A suspected slasher accused of stabbing two men and two women in a bloody attack in Anaheim is scheduled to make his first court appearance Thursday.
The rampage ended when a nearby rescuer saw a victim with “her shirt full of blood and her gushing out blood from her neck.
“He already had stabbed four people, so I said these people’s lives are in danger as well as mine and everybody that’s around here, so I grabbed a bat and I whacked him like four or five times in the rib area.”
The attack suspect, Gino Fuentes, 20, was in custody in the Orange County Jail in lieu of $500,000 bail, according to Orange County Sheriff’s Department inmate records. He was booked on suspicion of four counts of attempted murder, police said.
Officers were dispatched at 11:11 a.m. Tuesday to the home in the 100 block of West Bluebell Avenue, Sgt. Daron Wyatt of the Anaheim Police Department said.
When officers arrived they found two men, aged 25 and 55, and two women, one 66 and the other 48, suffering from stab wounds, according to police.
Fuentes was taken into custody about a mile from the scene, Wyatt said, noting that a neighbor helped stop the stabbing spree by striking the assailant with a baseball bat and a crowbar.
Manuel Gonzalez was working across the street when he saw a bleeding woman stumble out of a house pleading for help and the suspect also was knifing another person, prompting him to grab the bat and the crowbar and attack the assailant, according to broadcast reports.
“I saw her shirt full of blood and her gushing out blood from her neck,” Gonzalez told television reporters.
“He already had stabbed four people, so I said these people’s lives are in danger as well as mine and everybody that’s around here, so I grabbed a bat and I whacked him like four or five times in the rib area.”
The assailant dropped the knife at that point, ran into the home and came out with a bigger knife, Gonzalez said. That’s when he put the crowbar to use.
“I chased him with a crowbar and I hit him one more time in the back,” Gonzalez said. “I chased him a little bit more, but then my parents were like, don’t chase him anymore because the cops are coming and if they see you with a crowbar they’re gonna think it’s you.”
Wyatt was quick to acknowledge Gonzalez’s heroics.
“We try not to recommend people to get involved in a violent assault like this, but he’s obviously instrumental in helping to stop what could have been a much worse attack,” Wyatt said.
A motive for the stabbings has not been revealed.
—City News Service