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A stabbing mystery – man changes story about who attacked him

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Gallup police are trying to find the man who stabbed a Manuelito man, but it hasn’t been easy since the victim has given different stories about what happened.

Gallup Patrolman Douglas Hoffman said he was dispatched about 3:30 pm on June 7 to the Shell Gas Station at 3308 W. Highway 66 in reference to a man being stabbed, and then walking into the business.

When he got there, he saw Mitchell Williams, 43, of Manuelito, N.M. sitting in the garage connected to the gas station. Hoffman said he could see three stab wounds on William’s upper left arm and one stab wound on his lower back.

He asked Williams who had stabbed him and Williams replied the guy from the fight the other day. Hoffman remember that he had responded the day before to a fight between Williams and another man.

Williams then told Hoffman that the suspect had ran westward toward a ditch. As Williams was being treated for his wounds, Hoffman looked up the report about the fight.

He began searching the path to the ditch and secured the area. As he did, he saw a couple of men on the other side of the drainage ditch. One of those men turned out to be the man involved in the fight with Williams. The man was detained and taken to police headquarters and then to Gallup Detox.

Hoffman then returned to the scene where the stabbing took place and learned that Williams had told other detectives a different story, so he went to the Gallup Indian Medical Center and talked to Williams who now told him that the man he named was not the one who stabbed him.

Instead, he said it was a man named Mike. He said there was a witness to the stabbing who would be able to confirm how the man was who stabbed him.

Hoffman said he then went to the site of the stabbing once again, and tried unsuccessfully to find the witness.