Neighbors react to stabbings in Maricopa Meadows

The mood was peaceful this afternoon as young teens ran and played in a park near the entrance to Maricopa Meadows when students poured out of Maricopa Wells Middle School to head home.

All evidence of a triple stabbing that took place in the early morning hours on Monday in the 45000 block of West Dutchman Road had been washed away, without so much as a shred of crime-scene tape left behind.

“There was some blood out there,” said Lieutenant Allen Weston of Maricopa Police. “I am assuming that (Maricopa) Fire would have washed the street down once the investigation concluded on that scene.”

Police on Monday arrested a 21-year-old man on charges of aggravated assault in connection with the incident. Perry Patterson, police said, had been staying in a home on the block and had gotten into an argument, possibly over a girl (see”Police arrest suspect in connection with Maricopa Meadows triple stabbing”).

Weston said a group of teenagers and young adults had gotten into a fight, and then after it had broken up a second fight broke out. It was during the second fight that some of them “wound up getting cut.”

“We have not been able to converse at all with those who have been in the hospital, so this will be continuing,” Weston said.

While the mood today might have been peaceful, Monday’s was anything but.

“Yesterday was a busy day,” Weston said. “We had people at County Hospital and people doing search warrants. Everybody actually worked very hard to do this investigation.”

The neighbors noticed.

Tanika Richards, who lives across the street from the house where Police served a search warrant, said she saw four or five police vehicles on the block. Although she saw officers going in and out of the house and a crime scene investigation van parked out front, she initially thought that an elderly woman who lives there had died.

It wasn’t until a fellow neighbor knocked on her door to let her know that she realized what had taken place.

“Normally, with a child being stabbed on the block, you would think someone would come around and ask questions, if we heard anything, or if our kids were involved,” she said.

Richards said the police investigation lasted for hours.

“I sat and watched from the window upstairs, being the nosey neighbor,” she said.
Another neighbor, Monica Cantu, said she wasn’t at all surprised to see police parked down the street, because they have been called to the residence numerous times.

“They always have problems with the boys who stay there,” she said. “I know the cops have been there.”

Exactly why police might be involved, she couldn’t say.

“I don’t get too much involved in what’s going on,” Cantu said.

Cantu, who has rented in Maricopa Meadows for the past year, said she and her family recently bought a home in Senita where they will be moving soon.

Even so, she said she’s interested in learning more about another neighbor’s effort to organize a Block Watch for the street.

“I think it’s something everybody should be interested in,” she said.

Meanwhile, both Richards and Cantu said they will watch their children more closely.

“We moved here and we thought this was a pretty safe town,” said Richards, who moved to the area in February. “I mean, you see graffiti, but at 4 in the morning or whatever it was, when they should be getting ready for school on Monday, you wonder where the parents are.”

The head of household at the residence police searched on Monday could not be immediately reached for comment Tuesday afternoon. A nurse who answered the door said she was sitting with “Grandma,” who was napping. She accepted a business card and said she’d pass it on to her employer.

Another neighbor, Marilyn Taylor, said she must have slept through the entire incident Monday morning, and somehow missed the police activity later in the day.

A half-dozen or so of a much larger number of teens who were socializing in the area said they hadn’t heard a word about any fight taking place, either.

Taylor said she sees youths congregating in the area regularly, and that on more than one occasion they have appeared to have been drinking and possibly smoking or doing drugs.

“God wants a better life for them, for sure,” she said.

Taylor is among those who are part of congregations that meet in local schools on Sunday for church. The member of Acts Christian Center said those who worship in the schools on weekends often pray for the children who use the same space to attend class Monday through Friday.

While Taylor noted that many of today’s youth do show respect for authority, she is concerned that a growing number do not.

“I believe it started when they took religion out of the schools,” she said.

Weston said, at least in part, that timing likely played a role in this particular incident.

“It seems like any time school comes to an end, we have kids who are trying to grow up,” he said.

Photo by RuthAnn Hogue