News: Long Island Man Pleads Guilty to Slashing
(Long Island, N.Y.) A twenty-eight-year-old man from Islip Terrace plead guilty in Cayuga County Court on Wednesday to attempted murder in the second degree. The charge came from an incident that happened a little over a month ago in Auburn, New York and involved an altercation with a friend of his girlfriend’s mother. After the argument escalated, the twenty-eight-year-old slashed the woman’s throat, nearly decapitating her.
The man had traveled upstate to visit his girlfriend at her mother’s house, who was there with her two children. The couple met at Conifer Park drug rehabilitation in-patient facility. The forty-one-year-old victim allegedly criticized her attacker for their lifestyle of drug abuse.
The victim was visiting her friend, the homeowner, and was planning on attending a local benefit. The altercation, which happened at roughly one-thirty in the morning on February 20th, caused the attacker’s girlfriend to call 911. She claims to have stepped out of the room for a short amount of time, only to find her mother bleeding and her boyfriend holding a knife.
The homeowner had stepped out of the home and was at a local store. After returning and processing the situation, she was able to detain the attacker as he tried to flee by foot. Police found her sitting on him in the middle of the street after she had jumped on his back and tackled him to the ground.
Though the woman suffered no harm in this case, police urge civilians not to pursue possibly dangerous suspects. Nonetheless, the woman claimed she would have done anything to prevent her friend’s attacker from making an escape. Following the struggle, police realized the attacker sustained a self-inflicted knife wound to the neck.
The victim suffered from a slash wound from ear to ear, almost causing her to bleed to death. Officials say she was minutes away from death when she was hospitalized. She has since been recovering after being released from the hospital.
Police say that the victim and her attacker were strangers before the Auburn incident. She was originally in critical condition after sustaining the wound from a folding pocketknife. Some reports say she was waiting in a nearby car when police came on the scene.
Originally, the victim was taken to Upstate Medical hospital, but was transferred to University Hospital in Syracuse for emergency surgery. Auburn is located in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York and is about twenty minutes southwest of Syracuse. The attacker, who injured himself after the attack, was taken to Auburn Memorial Hospital for superficial wounds and released after a short stay.
The victim’s life was saved by a military-trained Emergency Medical Technician who pinched off her jugular vein. She will have permanent nerve damage to her face along with a scar and was put into a medically-induced coma for a week before she healed. Her attacker is being forced to pay for all of her medical expenses.
In addition to second-degree attempted murder, he also plead guilty to assault and criminal possession of a weapon. He was arraigned at Auburn City Court and held in Cayuga County Jail without bail. His sentencing will be held on May 3rd, and he must have five years of post-release supervision in addition to a possible eighteen-year sentence.
