Bend Stabbing Suspect Appears in Court

A Bend man accused of stabbing a neighbor last weekend was pulled over and arrested Thursday on Highway 97 near the Juniper Butte weigh scales north of Terrebonne, police said.

A guns-drawn “high-risk traffic stop” by Bend police brought the arrest, without incident, of Patrick Olstad, 42, around 11:30 a.m. just south of the Juniper Butte weigh scales, said Sgt. Clint Burleigh.

Olstad was a passenger in a car driven north from Bend by his sister, Jesse Olstad, who was arrested on a charge of hindering prosecution, he added.

Capt. Jim Porter said that since Tuesday, detectives had “been conducting active surveillance on numerous locations and individuals” in and around the city, trying to locate Olstad.

Detectives spotted Olstad’s sister leaving Bend northbound on Highway 97 in her 2000 Honda CRV. As they followed them, detectives were able to identify the passenger as her brother.

Deschutes County sheriff’s deputies and Redmond police assisted in the traffic stop.

Olstad faces attempted murder and other charges in the Saturday evening incident, in which he stabbed a man in the stomach and leg at a residence at NE Sixth Street and Innes Lane.

He was lodged at the Deschutes County Jail Thursday evening, held on $250,000 bail on the attempted murder charge, also facing first-, second- and fourth-degree assault charges, menacing, unlawful entry into a motor vehicle and two counts of unlawful use of Mace.

As Olstad made his first court appearance on the new charges Friday, a check of court records found his background is not a clean one. They show a long history of crimes over the past two decades, ranging from identity theft to criminal mischief, with over 100 charges against him in 2006 alone.

Burleigh identified the victim Wednesday as Steven Allen Nusbaum of Bend, who was treated at the hospital and has since been released.

After the stabbing, officers said he took off on his bicycle, and had not been seen since.

Officers blocked off several blocks stretching from the suspect’s home at Alpine Meadows Apartments to the victim’s home on NE Sixth Street and Innes Lane.

It all started just after 4 p.m. Saturday, when a family reunion at Orchard Park in northeast Bend was disrupted by sounds of yelling.

“And the next thing I know, I hear all these sirens and cop cars,” said onlooker Fedora Senegirev. “And we realized later that somebody was stabbed in that house I was looking back at.”

Bend police worked quickly, blocking off roads on Sixth Street from Innes to Isabella — and the search for the suspect was on.

The victim,was taken by ambulance to St. Charles Medical Center-Bend with knife wounds to the leg and stomach. His car was the scene of a violent crime, filled with blood.

“It’s amazing how much blood you can get from a small cut, and this was multiple stab wounds,” said police Lt. Brian Kindel. “That’s the amount I would expect on something like this.”

Authorities said the suspect, Olstad ran from the victim’s home to his own, down the street at the Alpine Meadows Apartments.

After a three-hour standoff, complete with police dogs, search warrants and megaphones — and armed with a search warrant, a SWAT team burst into Olstad’s apartment, only to find it empty.

What some might call a waste of time and resources was absolutely necessary, police said.

“Our No. 1 priority is to track him down, for the safety of public and victims — you don’t know if he might come back,” Kindel said. “So we’ll put every ounce of manpower to that end.”

And that was no understatement.

“We had negotiators come out to help us with the apartment, people on standby, We called in night shift early — we had the entire on-duty police force out here,” Kindel said.

“We know that the weapon used was a knife,” Kindel said. “But whenever you have situations like this, you just never know what the person — if you were to decide to try to detain this person, you don’t know how many knives this person may have, or a weapon or firearm.”

Despite the unsettled outcome, for the dozens of onlookers who stood for hours in the rain, watching it all unfold, the standoff was far from a waste of time.

“Especially for young teenagers, it was like they were watching a movie or something,” Senegirev said. “Because they had these guns and cops.”

Police said Olstad was considered armed and dangerous, and anyone who spotted him was warned to not approach him, but call 911 immediately.

Police said the nature of their relationship is unknown at this point, but neighbors told NewsChannel 21 there have been several instances of officers called to the victim’s home on disturbances in recent weeks.

Area residents told NewsChannel 21 the there had been long-standing personal issues between the two men.