Boy, 17, arrested in Rohnert Park stabbing of grandmother

Rohnert Park resident Eric Strickland was smoking a cigarette in his garage Tuesday night when he heard what sounded like children screaming.

Alarmed by the noise, Strickland, 43, walked out to the front of his Beverly Drive home at about 8:30 p.m. to investigate. The street was dark, but he could make out a person leading two young children away from a home on the southeast corner with Brett Avenue. Another witness told him that a male teenager was still inside the home.

“Someone out there said someone was stabbed and there was more screaming,” Strickland said Wednesday afternoon. “I called 911.”

Police would arrest a 17-year-old boy later Tuesday night on suspicion of trying to kill his grandmother and terrorizing her two young children, according to Rohnert Park police.

Officers who responded to the call confronted in the yard the teenage suspect holding a knife with a curved blade, according to Rohnert Park Cmdr. Aaron Johnson. The youth did not follow multiple orders to drop the weapon, Johnson said. Three officers fired their Taser weapons to subdue him and take him into custody without further incident, Johnson said.

“He was a threat to the officers and, had he escaped, a threat to the community,” Johnson said.

The suspect’s name was not released by authorities due to his age.

The victim, a 56-year-old woman, was bleeding profusely when she was found by officers, Johnson said. She had at least one clear wound to her neck, he said.

Neighbors told police they’d heard screaming at the home earlier that night and went inside to see what happened, according to Rohnert Park authorities. There, neighbors found the teen holding his stabbed grandmother against a hallway wall, keeping her from leaving. The incident unfolded in view of her children, 8 and 4, the younger of which the suspect grabbed by the neck and choked prior to the stabbing, police said.

Neighbors eventually convinced the teen to let the kids go and took them to a nearby home, Johnson said.

“Once the kids were gone, the suspect allowed the victim to leave,” he said. “The victim went across the street to one of the neighbor’s house and that’s when we got the 911 call that said someone had been stabbed.”

A neighbor directed police to the home where the altercation took place and officers went inside, looking for the suspect.

It was as police were checking the home that an officer stationed outside saw the teen carrying a knife with a curved blade, Johnson said. Police believe the teen went into the backyard after the stabbing and was walking to the front of the home when he ran into the lone officer. Johnson did not know if the knife was the same one used in the reported stabbing.

Seeing the armed teen, the officer moved behind a parked car at the home, creating a barrier between the two, and ordered him to drop the knife, Johnson said.

The noise prompted two officers inside the home to go outside, where they saw the suspect and the officer. They also told the teen to drop the weapon, Johnson said.

“I heard cops tell him to drop the knife,” said Strickland, whose view of the incident was blocked by several bushes on the Brett Avenue property. “It was a couple of warnings before the Taser went off.”

The officer who first saw the teen struck him with an electroshock weapon about a minute after coming in contact with him, Johnson said. The two other officers then deployed their Taser weapons seconds later because the teen still had the knife in his hand after the first shock, Johnson said.

Officers took the teen into custody and arrested him on suspicion of attempted murder and felony child cruelty causing injury. He was taken to Sonoma County’s juvenile detention facility while his grandmother was rushed to a hospital by ambulance. She was treated for the neck wound and released.

Police withheld her name on the grounds that she was the victim of a violent assault.

Johnson did not know if the teen lived in the home and said investigators had yet to identify any motive for the reported attack.

Strickland, a 10-year resident of his Beverly Drive home, said he did not remember seeing a teenage boy living at the home, though the neighbors were not close.

No one answered the door at the Brett Avenue home Wednesday afternoon. A wooden fence on the left side of the home’s garage had no door and a piece of yellow police tape lay in the street nearby.

Staff writer Randi Rossmann contributed to this report. You can reach Staff Writer Nashelly Chavez at 707-521-5203 or nashelly.chavez@pressdemocrat.com.