Category: Stabbing
Woman brutally stabbed multiple times in unprovoked attack at Sonic Drive-In; suspect still on the loose
A woman who was brutally stabbed multiple times last month at a Sonic Drive-In is speaking out about the unprovoked attack, KFOR-TV reported.
Linda Hollrah drove to the fast-food restaurant on NE 23rd Street in Oklahoma City to pick up her order, the station said.
‘I remember thinking over and over and saying over and over, “Why did this happen to me?”‘
When she parked her car, Hollrah’s attacker stabbed her through the window multiple times, KFOR said.
“Before I knew it, he just came straight up to my car, said no words to me, and just attacked me and just kept stabbing and stabbing,” Hollrah said to the station.
The attack left bloodstains in her car and in the parking lot, KFOR said.
“It’s hard to even still piece together kind of what my brain was going through, except just to fight for my life,” she added to the station.
The attack left her with numerous injuries, KFOR reported.
“I was stabbed once in my kneecap, three times in my forearm, once on my inner, two on my outer thigh, and then once in my upper abdomen, which ended up causing a nick in my liver that they had to repair for internal bleeding,” Hollrah explained to the station.
KFOR, citing the incident report, said Sonic told police that the restaurant’s surveillance cameras were not working at the time.
Police instead are relying on video of the suspect before and after the attack that a nearby traffic camera recorded, the station said.
But so far no arrests have been made, KFOR noted, and police are asking anyone with information to call Crime Stoppers.
RELATED: Mainstream media turns a blind eye to vicious stabbing of young Ukrainian woman
“I remember thinking over and over and saying over and over, ‘Why did this happen to me?’ Which, unfortunately, you know, nobody can answer and maybe will never be answered,” Hollrah shared with the station.
KFOR added that Hollrah has been unable to work during her recovery: “It’s stressful thinking about the mountain of debt that this is going to leave me in and having to pay for some things that my insurance probably won’t cover — very specialized things that I’m going to need,” she told the station.
Hollrah’s sister started a GoFundMe to assist her with expenses. As of Friday afternoon, $14,580 has been raised; the goal amount is $24,000.
“For a hard-working single mother, seeking out help isn’t always the easiest thing, so I asked Linda’s permission to invite our family and friends to support her in this way,” the GoFundMe states. “Any and all contributions are appreciated more than you know, as Linda and our family try to move forward from this senseless act of violence.”
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Black male stabs white male. But victim uses racial slur AFTER stabbing — and Portland jury issues ‘inconceivable’ verdict.
A black male recently admitted in court that he stabbed a white male over the summer, but a Portland jury acquitted the black male after learning the victim uttered a racial slur — and spoke the word following the stabbing.
Gary Edwards was charged with second-degree assault for knifing Gregory Howard Jr. on Northwest 5th Avenue in Portland’s Old Town neighborhood on the morning of July 7, OregonLive reported last week.
‘Beyond inconceivable.’
A conviction could have handed Edwards a sentence of five years and 10 months in state prison, OregonLive said.
However, even though Edwards admitted on the witness stand to the stabbing, he said it was self-defense due to Howard’s aggression, the outlet said.
Edwards testified that Howard yelled the racist slur as soon as he saw him, the outlet reported, adding that Howard denied the claim.
More from OregonLive:
Transit cameras showed Edwards, a fixed-blade knife clasped at his side, approaching Howard from behind as he sat on a bench. The video has no sound, but Howard springs up and pushes Edwards as soon as he sees him. The duo scuffle against a wall for a brief moment, ending with Edwards stabbing Howard in the shoulder.
Defense attorney Daniel Small said the most relevant evidence was recorded later when security officers heard the wounded man shouting the racist slur and captured it on their body cameras as he described the incident.
Small added that Edwards, 43, was just approaching Howard, also 43, and offering a simple trade: his knife for cigarettes, the outlet said.
“What other than racism could explain why Mr. Howard perceived hatred, animosity, and aggression from a complete stranger?” Small asked the jury on Oct. 30, the outlet reported.
Prosecutor Katherine Williams countered that what Howard said after the knifing was irrelevant and that Edwards was always “in control” during the altercation, OregonLive said.
“The defendant is not scared for his life. He didn’t retreat; he sauntered up — and he sauntered away after he stabbed someone,” Williams told the jury, according to the outlet. “The defendant created the situation.”
Despite the prosecutor’s argument, the jury soon acquitted Edwards, OregonLive said.
More from the outlet:
Edwards, who declined to comment through his attorney, spent about three months in custody before the trial, after prosecutors successfully argued he shouldn’t be released.
Their memo noted that Edwards was convicted of attempted second-degree assault in 2021 and was sentenced to three years in prison for another stabbing at the Skidmore Fountain MAX platform in May 2020. He was accused of fourth-degree assault for fighting with a clerk at Old Town’s Helen’s Market, but the case was dismissed in June because no public defender was available to take his case.
Howard, meanwhile, has been arrested several times in recent years and was convicted of felony rape of a child in Washington’s Kitsap County in 1997, records show. He couldn’t be reached for comment.
The New York Post’s Facebook entry about the acquittal generated well over 1,000 comments — and they’re the exact kinds of reactions you would expect. The following are a few of them:
- “Always remember if you’re shot or stabbed, you must give some type of positive affirmation to your attacker so you don’t sound hateful,” one commenter wrote. “Otherwise your attacker will be acquitted.”
- “It was probably a mostly peaceful stabbing,” another user quipped.
- “That’s wild. So let me get this right … He got attacked then said the N word, and the attacker got away with it cause he said it after he was already attacked?” another commenter asked. “That makes no sense.”
- “Beyond inconceivable,” another user stated.
- “What a funny world we live in,” another commenter observed.
- “Staying out of Portland …” another user shared.
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Man enters ER with bloody knife saying serial killer took girlfriend’s life. But her mother says she knows ‘savage’ truth.
A Massachusetts man in September walked into a New Bedford emergency room holding a bloody knife in his hand and claiming that a serial killer had stabbed his girlfriend to death, according to multiple reports. But the man now faces life in prison.
Tyler Baglini, 32, reportedly had a history of mental health issues and substance abuse, according to his attorney. After Baglini allegedly experienced an “episode” on Sept. 20, his girlfriend urged him to get help.
‘But I know the truth. I know how savage, how horrific, and how violent his actions were.’
Citing court documents, People magazine reported that Baglini’s girlfriend — 31-year-old Kerri Fidalgo — sent a text message to Baglini at 9:57 a.m. Sept. 20 that read: “Tyler, we can talk later. After you get checked out. You need help. You need to get better. You’re having an episode and you’re paranoid. Everything will be OK, but you need help. I love you. I care about you. Please.”
Police said Baglini wrote back: “Goodbye, I really loved you and I forgive you. Time to go to hell; you were the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Citing court documents, WPRI-TV reported that Baglini appeared at St. Luke’s Hospital at 12:39 p.m. and used a public phone there to call his parents multiple times — as well as Fidalgo twice. Baglini told family and his girlfriend that he was checking himself in for mental health issues — but he didn’t and left the hospital at 12:53 p.m., according to court documents.
Prosecutors said Baglini sent a photo of a knife to Fidalgo around 3:40 p.m.
Baglini later that afternoon reportedly staggered into the emergency room of St. Luke’s while holding a bloody knife and claiming that a serial killer had stabbed his girlfriend to death.
A prosecutor said Baglini’s “kitchen knife” had “blood on the blade,” according to WJAR-TV.
WPRI added that Baglini entered the hospital just before 5 p.m. and said the stabbing took place at her Atlantic Street apartment.
Fidalgo’s oldest sister, Kaila Whalen, reportedly became alarmed when police showed up that afternoon to do a welfare check on her sister.
“As my Portuguese-speaking grandmother fired questions at me in panic, I brushed her off and ran downstairs to Kerri’s apartment, desperate to understand what was happening,” Whalen told WPRI. “I had no idea what I was about to walk into. I didn’t know I would find my sister lying on her living room floor, motionless, surrounded by her own blood.”
Whalen added to WPRI that she remembered seeing her sister’s eyes open and her hands raised as if she was trying to protect herself, which Whalen told the station is an image that will haunt her for the rest of her life.
Whalen recounted to WPRI, “No one should ever have to find someone they love like that. I was frozen in horror, screaming. My mind was racing, but [my] feet wouldn’t move.”
Still, she was able to run back upstairs for the officers, who called for backup and began CPR, according to WPRI.
“I remember how frantic and forceful it seemed, like it was hurting her. It was too much to bear, so I dropped to my knees in her kitchen and begged God to spare her life. I have never felt so hopeless — so useless,” Whalen recalled to WPRI.
Assistant Bristol County District Attorney Karen O’Sullivan said Fidalgo had been stabbed 14 times in the neck, head, and torso, and her injuries were consistent with attempts to defend herself, according to the Herald News.
Fidalgo was rushed to St. Luke’s Hospital, where she was pronounced dead, according to the police report.
The Bristol County District Attorney’s Office said Baglini was arrested Sept. 20 and charged with murder.
Boston.com reported that Baglini was held overnight at Saint Luke’s Hospital for psychiatric evaluation.
Last week at the sentencing hearing, Fidalgo’s mother unleashed her fury on Baglini.
“I have watched him sit here in this courtroom, quiet and timid, as if he couldn’t possibly have done what he did,” Melissa Fidalgo, Kerri’s mother, told the judge before sentencing, according to the Boston Globe.
“But I know the truth. I know how savage, how horrific, and how violent his actions were,” she continued, according to the Globe. “I hate that he thought he had the right to take my daughter’s life. I hate that he took her from us, from the family that loved her so deeply, from the future she was building, and from the world that was brighter because she was in it.”
Baglini’s attorney, Michael Hussey, said during sentencing that his client has a history of substance abuse and mental health issues that were “probably of little concern to anyone in this room, and probably of little value to this court.”
Judge Raffi N. Yessayan responded, “Whatever other issues he may have, he’s a batterer. He’s a domestic abuser. I look at his record, and that’s clear. That’s why I didn’t let him hide in the corner.”
Baglini pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. The judge sentenced him to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 25 years, court records show.
Kerri’s youngest sister, Jazelle Fidalgo, described her sister as “a mother, role model, protector, and best friend.”
“Whenever I needed advice or comfort, she was the person I called,” Jazelle told WPRI. “She made me feel safe. She believed in me more than anyone ever could. She pushed me to chase my dreams and see my worth, and to never give up on myself. She was the person who stood by me through everything — my shoulder to cry on and my source of strength when I didn’t have any left.”
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