Police: Man admits stabbing 4 near Vegas Strip
This photo released Friday Aug. 9,2013 by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department showing Lee A. Sanford, 53, a suspect in the stabbing of four people in what investigators called a random attack on a sidewalk near the Las Vegas Strip. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, File)
LAS VEGAS >> A man accused of randomly stabbing four people near the Las Vegas Strip told police he was upset after a street argument, so he fetched a 9-inch kitchen knife from his apartment and attacked people he thought were bothering him.
A police report released Friday following the arrest of Lee A. Sanford said a 56-year-old woman underwent surgery for a stomach wound, a man and woman were each stabbed in the lower back and a teen was slashed in the shoulder in separate attacks on a Harmon Avenue sidewalk a little after 11 p.m. Thursday.
Sanford, 53, surrendered a few minutes later at a McDonald’s restaurant on the Las Vegas Strip. Police said he placed a knife on a counter when police approached, and he was later treated for a cut on his hand.
Sanford, who is black, told police that he thought white people kept bothering him because people like to mess with the poor, according to the police report.
He said he retrieved the knife at home after walking away from a verbal sidewalk altercation with a man he described as white and a bully.
Police said Sanford also said more than once that he wanted to buy a gun to shoot people who bothered him, but he also was sometimes incoherent during his police interview following his arrest.
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Sanford was jailed without bail pending a court appearance Monday on four charges of battery with a deadly weapon, a felony carrying a possible sentence of two to 10 years in state prison.
Among the injured were a 25-year-old man who reported that he was stabbed in the elbow and lower back by a man who walked up to him and attacked him, police said, and a 15-year-old boy who was with his parents when he said he felt something hit his shoulder.
Police said they were unable to immediately talk with the 56-year-old woman on Friday because she was in surgery at University Medical Center.
The 20-year-old woman told police she was standing on a sidewalk near Las Vegas Boulevard when she thought she was punched in the back. She then noticed that she was bleeding.
Las Vegas police said investigators found no prior association between Sanford and any of the injured people.
