Sheriff William Snyder says Harrouff’s condition has deteriorated and may not survive.
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– Andrew Ruiz WPTV (@AndrewNRuiz)UPDATE TO DOUBLE HOMICIDE: Suspect possibly provided false name to detectives. In this case, we can’t establish a motive. The couple was attacked Monday night, and a neighbor who tried to save them suffered stab wounds before deputies reached the scene. It’s possible that the couple, who’d been married 19 years, were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He said it was clear John Stevens had fought back during the attack.
The interior of the Stevens’ “Garage-Ma-Hall”, as they called it, included an old rug, foosball table and the wall-mounted head of a deer John found dead one day along the side of Island Way, the road that meanders past their home on Southeast Kokomo Lane and toward Indiantown Road. He said the autopsy on his wife, Michelle Mishcon, had not been completed.
“It’s just beyond me why that would happen”, Maddox said.
“He was trying to break the fight up and the guy turned on him”.
What they knew as of Tuesday evening, is that Harrouff, an Alpha Delta Phi fraternity brother studying pre-exercise science at FSU, had traveled back to South Florida with several fraternity brothers and was in Jupiter visiting his mother and father, who live separately in the area.
Martin County Sheriff William Snyder holds a press conference in Tequesta, Florida on August 17, 2016. “I’m not sure I have the words to tell you how I feel”. But his son didn’t walk to his house. His parents were so anxious by his behavior that they called police and some of his fraternity brothers in a futile attempt to find him before the attack.
Duffy’s issued a statement Tuesday, saying, “The restaurant is working closely with the Martin County Sheriff’s Office to support their investigation and will continue to assist law enforcement in providing them with the assets they need”.
Snyder said that at 9:20 p.m. on Monday, 911 dispatchers received a call from a neighbor who said he was stabbed while trying to stop an assault at a home across the street from him.
He said Harrouff was “abnormally strong”, making him suspect drugs were involved. He said the assailant had attacked a woman, who was lying motionless in her driveway.
Harrouff didn’t know the couple, Snyder said, and evidence shows Stevens and Mishcon were randomly attacked while sitting in their open garage. “I’m bleeding profusely at the moment”. When asked if he knew the man, he replied, “I have no idea”. Officers said Harrouff did not receive significant blunt trauma.
Calls to Harrouff’s family were not immediately returned.
Snyder said he can’t yet answer why deputies didn’t shoot Harrouff but said the angle to do so was extremely unsafe.
Austin Kelly Harrouff was arrested Monday, local time, after he allegedly stabbed to death Michelle Mishcon Stevens, 53, and John Joseph Stevens III, 59 in their Florida home.
“Somebody not feeling pain, not responding to a dog bite, repeated stuns from a Taser, taking three to four deputies and officer dog to get him off”. Then five deputies tried to pry Harrouff off Stevens, to no avail. The sheriff said investigators have tested to see if Harrouff had drugs in his system, particularly cocaine or Flakka, narcotics associated with psychotic and violent outbursts. The neighbor was taken into surgery at a Palm Beach County hospital after sustaining “substantial trauma”, Snyder said.
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It is the latest in a series of synthetic drugs that include ecstasy and bath salts, but officials say flakka is even easier to obtain in small quantities through the mail.
