18-year-old man stabs teen 15 times as her mother tries to intervene, Florida cops say
A 17-year-old athlete has a spinal cord injury after she and her mother were stabbed in a restaurant parking lot by an 18-year-old man who’d been stalking the teen for weeks, according to police and family members in Florida.
The teen and her mother were at a Mr. Chubby’s Wings restaurant in Ponte Vedra Beach at around 4:30 p.m. on June 3, according to an arrest warrant from the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office.
At the restaurant, the teen and her mom saw a man later identified by police as Spencer Ross Pearson, 18, and left the business to avoid contact with him, the warrant says.
Pearson had started to “follow and harass” the girl in April, according to the warrant.
After she and her mother left and began to walk toward their vehicle, Pearson started “charging” at them, the warrant says. He grabbed the teen’s arm and stabbed her around 15 times, according to the warrant.
The mother tried to intervene and was stabbed in the forehead and leg, according to the sheriff’s office. A bystander who tried to stop Pearson was also stabbed, the warrant says.
Pearson then “sliced his own throat several times,” according to the warrant.
The teen and her mom were both hospitalized, according to a GoFundMe. The woman’s muscles in her hand were severed from the bone, and the teen suffered a spinal cord injury, the page says.
Pearson was also hospitalized with an “unknown prognosis,” according to the sheriff’s office. A spokesman for the sheriff’s office did not have an update on his condition on June 6.
Pearson is charged with two counts of attempted murder and one count of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon causing permanent disability, according to the warrant.
The teen is a rising senior and “star softball player” at Ponte Vedra High School, according to the GoFundMe page.
Her oldest sister told First Coast News that the teen and Pearson had dated but had been broken up for a few months, and her mother was looking into getting a restraining order against him. She called her sister a “fighter.”
(She’s) the sweetest person you’ll ever meet, she’s always smiling, always,” she told the outlet.
Ponte Vedra Beach is about 20 miles southeast of Jacksonville.
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