‘She stabbed me.’ Competency test ordered for woman charged with Tacoma park stabbing
A Bremerton woman is accused of stabbing a man after she tried to steal his backpack at Tacoma’s Wright Park.
The 35-year-old woman was charged with first-degree assault and first-degree attempted robbery for the Aug. 1 incident.
She was scheduled to be arraigned Friday. Instead, deputy prosecutor Kaely Lawler asked the court to order her to undergo a competency evaluation. Pierce County Superior Court Commissioner Philip Thornton ordered her be held without bail pending the evaluation.
Charging details
Tacoma police officers were dispatched at 9:14 a.m. to a reported stabbing at Wright Park. Officers were advised that a woman stabbed a man in the neck with a pair of scissors, according to charging documents.
The man was lying on his back near a walking trail with blood seeping from his shirt collar. Officers learned from the man that he did not know his attacker. She tried to take his backpack that was on the table he was sitting at. When he did not let her take the backpack, she allegedly pulled out a pair of scissors and stabbed him in the neck, prosecutors wrote.
He found his friend after he was stabbed and told her to call the police, documents show. He was taken to St. Joseph Medical Center for his injuries. If the stab wound was a few millimeters in a different direction, the man would have bled out from an artery puncture, charging papers state.
The woman was arrested near the restrooms at the park. A witness was able to identify her as the stabbing suspect. The scissors used to allegedly stab the man were located in her possession and had blood on them, prosecutors wrote.
The witness said she saw the man and a woman sitting on a bench, prosecutors wrote. She saw and heard them arguing and recognized the woman as her bunkmate at the Nativity House, a homeless shelter in Tacoma.
The witness said the man approached her and said, “Call the cops, she stabbed me.” The witness saw the woman walking behind the man following the incident. She reported that the woman allegedly approached her with scissors in her hand and pointed them at the witness who feared she was going to be stabbed.
The witness said the woman’s behavior had become more erratic in the past several days, and she was concerned it was a mental health issue, prosecutors wrote.
The woman previously was convicted in King County for second-degree assault and in Bremerton for fourth-degree assault. She also has criminal history in California, court records show.
