Sunday Morning Stabbing

A 21-year-old man is in the Intensive Care Unit at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital after being stabbed multiple times in the early hours of Sunday morning.

According to Santa Barbara Police Department Sgt. Riley Harwood, officers responded to Cottage Hospital at 3:15 a.m. Sunday morning after reports that a patient had been admitted to the emergency room with multiple stab wounds. However, the officers were not able to make contact with the victim, who was driven to the ER by a friend, as he was unconscious. According to Harwood, the victim is still sedated in Cottage Hospital’s ICU following surgery.

Coincidentally, Harwood said, SBPD officers also responded to reports of a fight on the 1300 block of Indio Muerto Street roughly 15 minutes before the Cottage Hospital call, at 3 a.m. By the time the police arrived, however, the fight had dispersed.

Though he was not yet prepared to say that the stabbing was the result of that Indio Muerto incident, as other media outlets have reported, Harwood said the victim had sustained “serious injuries” and that his prognosis was unknown as of press time.

Additional sources beyond the police have reported that the stabbing did occur on the Eastside at Indio Muerto and Salinas, that the victim was from the Westside, and that a house was searched and car towed on West Anapamu Street Sunday morning.