Family rallies around KCK woman attacked by stabbing suspect who was then shot by police
Family members of a Kansas City, Kansas, woman who was stabbed in broad daylight Tuesday were in disbelief at the randomness of an attack that unfolded when the woman returned home from her routine volunteer work at a food pantry.
Laura Villegas had just gotten home from work and was changing clothes when she saw her daughter, 46-year-old Stephanie Perez, walking back from the the volunteer work and a man who appeared suspicious. She called out to Perez to get across the street.
By the time Villegas got outside, Perez was being loaded into the ambulance and carted off to the hospital.
“She’s done this for like seven years. She walked back and forth. Nobody’s ever hurt her,” said Villegas, whose daughter helps at Immanuel Lutheran Church, which hosts regular food pantries on Tuesdays. “Until today.”
Dan Villegas, Perez’s stepfather, also recalled seeing a man walking nearby covered in blood and holding what appeared to be a butcher’s knife.
“(He) walked down a couple blocks. Then I heard the gunshots. So I figured that he must have waved the weapon or something,” Dan Villegas said.
Roughly 30 of Perez’s family members gathered at the Kansas City hospital where Perez was taken Tuesday afternoon. Her family asked that the precise location not be publicized while she was being cared for.
“We’re all giving Stephanie a lot of support,” Laura Villegas said. “This is all her family, and they all love her.”
Kansas City, Kansas, police officers responded to the stabbing near 34th and Metropolitan Avenue around 11:45 a.m. Shortly after, they encountered a suspect who remained armed with a knife, said Deputy Chief Kent Anderson, a KCKPD commander and spokesman for the department’s patrol bureau within the Argentine neighborhood.
The man, described as being in his 30s, allegedly charged toward an officer with the knife, prompting two officers to discharge their weapons. The man was taken to the hospital in critical condition after being shot multiple times, according to police.
At the hospital, he was last listed in serious condition on Tuesday evening, according to police.
As officers were on scene, an employee of a nearby senior care center on Strong Avenue approached police and said a resident had been found injured. That man, who is in his 70s, was found dead of stab wounds in an apartment there, according to police.
Police said Tuesday the suspect was a relative of the older man who was found dead. Many other details, including the events leading up to the attacks, remained under investigation Tuesday.
As of Tuesday afternoon, Perez’s family was still getting information from surgeons who were treating her as she was sedated. Surgeons had worked to repair wounds to her neck, face and hand and were checking to make sure there were no puncture wounds in her throat, her younger brother Ernesto Perez said.
Family members of Perez started a GoFundMe webpage on Tuesday seeking financial assistance to help with her medical expenses.
Vickie Medina, Perez’s aunt, said her niece is the type of person who “would do anything for anybody.” She and other family members described her as a caring person with a big heart.
“She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Medina said.
