A suspect was arrested in Santa Rosa on Wednesday after allegedly attacking a homeless man in a wheelchair with a knife and a hammer.
Santa Rosa Police Department officers were dispatched just before 4 p.m. Tuesday to the area of South Wright Road and Finley Avenue on reports of a possible stabbing and discovered the 52-year-old victim at a bus stop near the intersection, according to a department statement.
Police reported finding the man with multiple cuts and “at least one puncture wound to his arms and one leg.” He was transported to the hospital for treatment of “significant” injuries.
The man was sitting at the bus stop when another man “aggressively approached him and pushed over his wheelchair unprovoked,” according to a department statement.
The suspect then used a hammer and a pocketknife to hit and slash the man several times. The suspect fled the scene before police arrived, but witnesses provided a description.
SRPD officers searched the area and discovered 18-year-old Ricky Carver, a homeless man from Santa Rosa, walking in the 3900 block of Louis Krohn Drive, about a mile from the scene of the attack.
Police officers apprehended him and discovered he was in possession of a hammer and pocketknife.
Officers identified Carver as the attacker and arrested him. One of the responding officers stated that they believed Carver had brandished a hammer at employees of a downtown retail store earlier that day after returning items he was attempting to steal.
Carver was booked into Sonoma County Jail on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon in connection with the bus stop attack. Charges for his alleged use of a hammer in the store have also been requested and are pending review, according to the police department.
According to jail records from the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, Carver is being held in lieu of $200,000 bail and is scheduled to appear in court on Friday.
