Neighbors recall stabbings that terrorized Key Peninsula neighborhood
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- Neighbors recall Tuesday stabbings and shooting near 14000 block of 87th Ave Ct NW
- Witnesses report knife attacks, a slashed tire, and several gunshots
- Local resident running FB group says community is shaken and fearful
Neighbors remained in shock Wednesday after witnessing the tragic stabbings and shooting Tuesday near the 14000 block of 87th Avenue Court Northwest on the Key Peninsula.
The neighborhood of duplexes is tucked away from the main highway that runs through the Peninsula. The cul-de-sac is easy to miss if you’re on your way to Gig Harbor or Tacoma.
Five people died Tuesday after the reported stabbings, according to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office, including the suspect, who a sheriff’s deputy fatally shot. The Medical Examiner has not released their names. Deputies said four people died at the scene, including the 32-year-old suspect. A fifth person later died of their injuries.
On Wednesday, some of the normal hum of life was returning. A FedEx delivery, the mailman dropping off mail.
Media was starting to return to the site mid-morning after Tuesday’s flurry, and neighbors were bracing for questions, some acknowledging the events of Tuesday and quickly walking on, others willing to share what they experienced.
Three neighbors on Wednesday agreed to discuss what they saw with The News Tribune on the condition of anonymity.
“I moved here after my husband passed away, and it’s just been a wonderful neighborhood,” one neighbor said. “It’s quiet. Well, it has been quiet, with lots of nice people. This is just a shock.”
She was in a front room of her home during the attacks, the room where she can bask in the sunshine amid the Peninsula’s tall evergreens.
“I use it as my den, my office, my computer room, my sewing room, and so that’s where I spend most of my day,” she said. “This is the only room that is just nice and bright, so I just spend a lot of time there.”
“I saw one lady that got stabbed right over there,” she said, pointing from her vantage point sitting on her porch.
She said that unidentified individuals “were all in a car sitting in front of my neighbors. The car was sitting there … and these two guys walk up the street and get in the car. So I thought they must have been waiting for them or something. And then the next thing I see is the driver jumps out of the car and starts running over there, and the guy behind the driver’s side, in the back seat, jumped out and grabbed her, threw her to the ground and just started stabbing.”
“When the shots rang out, trying to think if it was before or after I talked to 911, or maybe I was on the phone, I don’t know. I know I just started hollering, ‘Oh my God,’ to myself.”
The woman did not have any further information, and the investigation is ongoing.
Another neighbor showed The News Tribune the spare tire on his rental car, replaced, he explained, after the alleged assailant took a knife to the original.
That neighbor, who had been working upstairs in his home office Tuesday morning, came out after hearing a commotion outside, first thinking a German Shepherd was attacking a neighbor, not that he was seeing a homicide.
“Nobody thinks like that. That’s just not normal. So when I saw the tussle, the melee, I thought, ‘Oh, God, it’s the dog. I need to run out there and pull the dog off of her.’”
He wasn’t expecting what happened next. He said he realized, “That’s not a dog. It’s a murder or a killing of some sort.”
In shock, he first asked what was going on. A man brandishing a knife turned to him, he said.
“He got up just calmly with measure, started walking toward me and saying, ‘I don’t know, does someone need help?’ And he’s brandishing the knife at me.
“He chased me to the house,” he added. The neighbor barricaded himself in his home and told his wife to call 911.
“I got here about 10 seconds before him and got two handguns, one for my wife. … The guy was trying to kick in the door. So I went downstairs, posted myself up in the living room and told him, ‘If you come through, I’ll kill you.’”
The neighbor said the man eventually left, but not before slashing the front passenger side tire of his rental car in the driveway.
The neighbor said he waited “about 45 seconds” still unsure what was going on, but fearing the man would attack others.
“I asked my wife, ‘Are you okay in the house to defend yourself with this firearm, because I have to go deal with him,’” the neighbor recalled. “And she said yes.”
It wasn’t long after stepping back outside when he heard “several rounds discharge,” he said, and everything was over.
A third neighbor had just walked her kids to the school bus stop.
“I actually just got my kids on the bus. I was visiting with my mother in my house. But we’re so loud and we were at the very back end that we didn’t hear anything until police already got here and it was over with,” she told The News Tribune on Wednesday.
“Once some of the neighbors came out, I felt like it was safe for me to come out,” she added.
The homes in the cul-de-sac are all rental properties, according to the private property manager, Allison Gower, who spoke with The News Tribune Wednesday. Gower provided a statement about the victims in a phone call Wednesday afternoon, saying that she had no information “other than the suspect was not a resident, and the names are not being released at this time and won’t be released until the medical examiner releases the names.”
Key Peninsula ‘very tight community’
Pamela Cumbie, a Key Peninsula resident of over 30 years, spoke separately with a reporter over the phone Wednesday morning about how the violent event has shaken the larger Key Peninsula community. She doesn’t live in the neighborhood where the stabbings occurred, but has a home nearby. Cumbie also runs a private Facebook group for Key Peninsula residents that has about 6,000 members.
“I actually have a friend who is afraid to call her friend who lives in the cul-de-sac because she’s afraid she won’t answer,” Cumbie said. “People are really shook up … their hearts go out to them. It’s a horrible thing in our community.”
The Key Peninsula is “a very tight community,” she told The News Tribune.
Less than a month has passed since another Key Peninsula resident, a paraeducator for the Peninsula School District, was killed in a shooting along with her adult son and dog. The News Tribune reported that 48-year-old Jennifer Bridgette Lantz was found dead in her Vaughn-area home.
“My heart just feels broken for them,” Cumbie said about the victims who died Tuesday. “I didn’t know them. I didn’t know the paraeducator either, personally. But my heart just, it just hurts.”
Staff writer Julia Park contributed to this report.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include comment from the property manager.
This story was originally published February 25, 2026 at 3:01 PM.
