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Number of fatal stabbings is puzzling

The nature of the attacks, including ones with a sword and a screwdriver, leaves families and police pondering the violence.

By ABHI RAGHUNATHAN
Published July 30, 2006

ST. PETERSBURG — They began as arguments on hot summer nights.

Two men quarrelled on a sidewalk, waking up neighbors. A woman barged into the house of a longtime friend and confronted her about rumors. A man walked back to an apartment after a long night at a bar and began tussling with another tenant.

Then someone reached for a knife, a sword, even a screwdriver, authorities said. The verbal feuds ended in vicious killings.

In the past two months, St. Petersburg police have handled four homicides in which one person stabbed another to death. That’s just one fewer fatal stabbing than the police handled in all of last year. The Sheriff’s Office handled the homicide case of another St. Petersburg man who deputies say was slashed to death with a samurai-style sword.

No one seems to know exactly why there has been an bizarre spate of fatal stabbings this summer. The killings aren’t connected.

“In my experience, I don’t recall a situation like this,” said Sgt. Michael Puetz, the head of the Police Department’s homicide unit.

But the spike has residents, family members and police officers talking about the nature of stabbings, as well as the circumstances that turned arguments or run-ins into homicide scenes.

The series of stabbings began June 10, when police say Jennie Hartley, 47, was killed by Blake Carter Stryker, the 17-year-old boy next door. It is still unclear why Stryker may have stabbed Hartley 50 times that night; police say he told one friend that he was high on drugs.

Leonard Territo, an emeritus professor of criminology at the University of South Florida, said stabbings tend to be more intimate and more angry than shootings, which still constitute the vast number of homicides.

“The level of rage is probably pretty high,” Territo said. “It’s much more personal when you’re stabbing someone as opposed to firing a weapon from some distance away.”

But the stabbing deaths do have one benefit for police: They tend to produce more forensic evidence than shootings, making it easier to catch suspects. Also, since stabbings are often preceded by arguments, police generally have an easier time finding witnesses to the assaults.

In fact, police have made arrests in all but one of this summer’s fatal stabbings.

But the violent nature of the attacks still leaves friends and family members searching for answers, even after police arrest suspects.
It didn’t take police long to arrest 25 year-old Ebony Keanya Williams on a charge of murdering Jacqueline Johnson, 33. Witnesses told police they saw Williams argue with Johnson on July 16.

Then, police said, Johnson reached into her car for a sharp object, perhaps a screwdriver, and stabbed Johnson in the neck and shoulder. Two of Johnson’s children, ages 12 and 13, watched the slaying.

But Johnson’s family still wonders how an argument between two women who were longtime friends could have turned deadly. They argued about rumors, family members and police said.

“I don’t know how something like a he-said, she-said argument could make you do something like kill someone,” said Sybrenda Johnson, 27, Jacqueline’s sister. “I mean, she stabbed her in front of her kids.”

Abhi Raghunathan can be reached at araghunathan@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8472.

[Last modified July 30, 2006, 21:26:40]