A suspect is taken to a waiting vehicle Tuesday night after being arrested by Santa Cruz Police officers in the backyard on the 400 block of Cedar Street in downtown Santa Cruz. A manhunt, employing dogs and drones, ensued after a stabbing was reported on Pacific Avenue. Police were able to make the arrest without further injuries. (Shmuel Thaler — Santa Cruz Sentinel)
SANTA CRUZ — A man police suspect may have been trying to rob a downtown pedestrian Tuesday night was later stabbed and suffered from a nonfatal wound.
Santa Cruz police were initially called at 5:50 p.m. to the 1000 block of Pacific Avenue for reports of a stabbing, potentially with two victims. One victim was later located.
The man, said Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Jon Bush, suffered from a shallow knife wound and was uncooperative with police investigators. Witnesses, however, told police that three men seen driving a vehicle in the area attempted to rob a pedestrian of his red-colored shoes. The stabbing victim — injured in the area of Pacific Avenue and Elm Street, Bush said, may have been one of those assailants. The red-shoed robbery victim, however, did not remain at the scene to report the crime and could not be located by police, Bush said.
A trail of blood through nearby business parking lots led away from Pacific Avenue, officers on the scene reported. Nearby, a crowd had begun to form as concert-goers lined up outside for a weekday show at the Catalyst Club.
As officers canvassed the neighborhood in search of the assailant, officials requested that residents in the area receive a reverse 911 lockdown notification.
With the help of two drones and a K-9 unit, officers narrowed their search to a residential block bounded by Elm, Center, Cedar and Maple streets. Searching backyard by backyard, patrols first found a backpack they believed was associated with the assailant, discarded in a trashcan. Minutes later, shortly after 7:15 p.m., officers placed a shirtless suspected assailant on the 400 block of Cedar Street in cuffs. As he was being placed inside a police vehicle, he yelled to an unknown subject, asking them to “tell (unintelligible) I love her.”
The detainee was a juvenile who investigators later determined was not the suspected assailant, Bush said. He was detained on minor charges, arrested on suspicion of fleeing police and imbibing alcohol as a minor, Bush said.
Originally published at Jessica York