Glendale homeowner the target of a random stabbing, suspect runs off

GLENDALE, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) — Steve Shaeffer has a big wound where a random stranger put a knife in his back. The attack happened last Tuesday night, Aprill 11, in front of the 45-year-old mechanic’s house, off Bell Road and 57th Avenue in Glendale.

“I’m actually lucky,” Shaeffer said. “I had a guardian angel watching over me because it missed my spinal cord by half and inch, and it missed everything inside.”

Ring surveillance video from a neighbor’s house shows Schaeffer standing behind his truck when someone sneaks up behind him and stabs him with a big knife. Amazingly, Schaeffer was able to walk over to a neighbor to get help with the knife still in his back. “I have had some first aid training, so I know any kind of puncture, don’t pull it out because you don’t know what you are going to encounter afterwards,” he said.

A still shot from the front door of the neighbor’s house shows the 12-inch knife sticking out of Shaeffer’s back. He was rushed to the hospital, where he spent the night recovering and wondering who could possibly do this. Glendale police are investigating the stabbing, but the only description of the suspect so far is of a young man in his late teens or early 20s dressed in black.

“I’ve had a lot of people tell me it could have been somebody with mental illness, could have been drug related, could have been a gang initiation,” Shaeffer said. “I have no clue. It was just so random and out of the blue. I have never seen the guy before in my life. I don’t know.”

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