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HOUSTON (FOX 26) - A resident in Independence Heights has shot and killed a man who was stabbing his neighbor. It happened on 35th Street at Arlington near North Main.
Police say the man had been in a domestic dispute with a woman. He left the house according to investigators, came back, set the house on fire, then started stabbing the woman. She is alive thanks to a neighbor who came to her rescue.
“If it wasn’t for this neighbor to protect that girl, she would’ve been dead,” says Kelvin Pope who is friends with the woman.
It started around 10:00 a.m. The woman and man had a dispute at the house.
“He left and came back with a bottle of gasoline and lit it and threw it in the window and set the house on fire,” explains the homeowner’s niece Gwendolyn Harris.
”By this time I was already on the phone with 911,” says neighbor Calvin Fitzgerald.
“Evidently the dude has to have a problem to throw gasoline through somebody’s window and force them out so he can stab them to darn near death. If that’s not a deranged individual, I don’t know who is,” adds Pope.
According to investigators, the man broke a window, then used the broken glass to repeatedly stab the woman. He chased her through the house, then outside, continuously stabbing her.
“The woman was screaming,” explains Fitzgerald who says another neighbor came out with his gun, fired warning shots and all but begged the man to stop. “The neighbor was saying 'get off of her you’re going to get shot. Get off, get off!' He said that maybe ten times”.
The neighbor opened fire on the man when he wouldn’t stop attacking the woman, killing him.
The home, now burned too badly to live in, actually belongs to an 85-year-old man, and he doesn’t have insurance. The elderly man’s nephew, Kelvin Pope, lived with him. It was Pope who allowed the woman to move in two weeks ago.
“This was his house. He allowed me to stay here. Now he can’t even live in his own house after 70 years of being in this house,” Pope said near tears. “We were all raised in this house. My uncle lived here since he was a teenager."
The 85-year-old homeowner and his caregiver were home when all of this occurred, but were not injured.
The woman who was stabbed was rushed into surgery at Ben Taub Hospital in critical condition. Residents say the man who attacked her was her ex-boyfriend, but detectives have not confirmed that.
The neighbor who shot and killed the attacker is not expected to be charged with a crime.