Good Samaritan uses bathing suit as tourniquet to help Honolulu stabbing victim
By Kristen Consillio
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HONOLULU (KITV) — Honolulu police are searching for an attempted murder suspect wanted for a stabbing outside the Keeaumoku Street Walmart over the weekend that left a Walmart employee in critical condition.
“He was probably lying about here. And then at this point I’m like kneeling down. I’m like, ‘Sir, I’m going to examine your wound.’ I lift up his shirt and take out the bikini top and I just go over him,” said Cayenne Dabalos, a Good Samaritan. “I was just like talking to him, putting pressure on the wound and I was saying, ‘Just keep breathing.'”
Dabalos did this for about three minutes until police arrived at the scene in front of a bus stop outside Walmart late Saturday night.
“You could tell he was in shock by his face, and he kind of had a blank stare most of the time. While I was applying pressure on him, he shot up like sat up and stuff here,” she said. “I think like for a moment he gained a realization of what happened.”
HPD said the suspect, who’s still on the loose, stabbed the 32-year-old man in the chest with a kitchen knife after getting into a physical altercation. During the fight, the blade of the knife broke, but police have recovered the weapon and suspect’s backpack.
“I just saw there was a steady flow of blood,” Dabalos said. “It wasn’t like gushing out, but it was like creeping out and then that’s when I realize like, oh, he’s like persistently losing blood.”
She said she learned how to stop the bleed in a high school health class.
“I was thinking like, maybe this man just needs someone to talk to him, to comfort him through this, because that’s exactly what I would want from this,” she said. “But definitely I was like shaking during this whole interaction like my hands are shaking.”
Dabalos, who happened to be passing by after shopping at Walmart, is still shocked by the turn of events.
“What are the odds of someone else knowing what to do at this moment?” she said. “I’m glad I was there to help for sure. And I don’t know I don’t think I take it as like a heroic act. I think I was just in the right place, and has the right skill set in order to step in and help.”
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