Woman with special needs stabbed while leaving volunteer job

By Betsy Webster

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    KANSAS CITY, Kansas (KCTV) — In a bizarre chain of events Tuesday, a woman was stabbed in a random attack, police shot her suspected attacker, then found an elderly man stabbed to death across the street — potentially stabbed hours earlier.

Laura Villegas said the woman stabbed was her daughter Stephanie. She’s expected to survive.

“She was talking,” Villegas said from the hospital. “She said, ‘It hurts.’ And, ‘Mama I tried to fight him off. I kicked him and I put my hands up,’ and that’s when she got [her hands] cut. She’s a strong girl. Very strong.”

Stephanie is 45 years old. Family members said she has special needs and was unable to work a typical job. For the past seven years, she volunteered at the weekly food pantry at Immanuel Lutheran Church at S. 33rd Street and Metropolitan Avenue.

“This was every Tuesday. It was like her job that she was going to. It meant everything to her,” Villegas said. “She loved meeting people. She felt important.”

She lived with her mom and dad just a few blocks away. They could watch her as she walked home. This Tuesday, her mom saw her getting attacked a block west of the church. She rushed out the door. As she was running to Stephanie, Stephanie was running to the church for help.

“The ambulance was already there when I got there,” Villegas said.

Stephanie told police she’d never met the man before. She gave a description. Seven minutes later, at 11:54 a.m., two officers spotted a man who matched that description a quarter mile away at S. 37th Street and Strong Avenue.

“They gave him multiple commands to drop the knife and he kept making movements towards the officers,” said Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department Deputy Chief Kent Anderson. “At that point, both officers discharged their guns.”

He went to the hospital in critical condition.

Not long after the police shooting, Anderson said, staff at a senior living home right across the street alerted police that the property manager had been checking on residents and had just found an elderly man stabbed to death inside one of the apartments.

Police believe he was a relative of the stabbing suspect. Anderson said he had likely been stabbed before the non-fatal stabbing by the church, sometime in the past eight hours.

Villegas didn’t want to share her thoughts on the man suspected of stabbing her daughter. She’s still trying to make sense of it.

“I just can’t believe this is happening. It’s just so emotional,” she said. “I don’t know who would want to hurt my baby. She is so innocent.”

She has a large extended family of siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins who crowded the hospital waiting room. They have a prayer chain going and a GoFundMe page to help with medical expenses.

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