ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – A 20-year-old man arrested in Seattle is accused of stabbing someone days earlier at an Orange County park, according to the sheriff’s office.
Michael Pierce Zaccardo, 20, was arrested via warrant Tuesday by the King County Sheriff’s Office in Washington.
Zaccardo faces a charge of attempted second-degree murder in a stabbing Saturday evening at Shadow Bay Park that left a man in his 20s hospitalized, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
The warrant, which was secured Monday, goes into detail of the alleged attack. According to the document, the victim was fishing on a pier when he observed an unknown man near him. The victim started walking back to his vehicle upon looking at his watch and seeing that it was 7:50 p.m., otherwise noticing that the man was following him, the warrant states. The victim turned around, asked the man if the park closed at 8 p.m. and had turned back around when he suddenly felt a punch to his back, later deemed a stab wound, investigators said.
The victim fell to the ground in a struggle with the man, who attempted to continue stabbing him, according to the warrant. Once the victim saw that the knife had fallen to the ground, he ran away and sought help from park staff, the warrant states.
Further, the warrant describes what the park staff saw. Making their rounds as the park closed, the staff observed the suspect sitting on a bench at the entrance to the pier and told him that he needed to leave. The man nodded his head and stared at the victim on the pier, the document states.
Come Sunday, the sheriff’s office got a call from someone claiming to be the victim of an aggravated assault that occurred around noon Saturday. This victim told deputies that he saw the park stabbing on the news and believed it was perpetrated by the same person from his case, in which he and Zaccardo met up and had a normal conversation before Zaccardo allegedly asked to fight him. When the victim refused, Zaccardo pulled out a knife and chased the victim before fleeing in a black BMW, investigators said.
Zaccardo was positively identified in a photographic lineup by the man who was stabbed and by a member of park staff, the sheriff’s office said. He will be held at the King County jail pending his extradition to Orange County.
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