NE Bend assault leads to stabbing, 3 arrests

Police said Saturday they had sorted out a Friday night altercation in northeast Bend in which two people were stabbed and another punched in the face and head. Three Bend men were arrested on assault and menacing charges – but not another man who they said had stabbed two of the suspects while defending his family from an unprovoked assault.

Police were called to the area of NE Sixth Street and Burnside Avenue shortly after 9 p.m. on a call of a dispute in progress, said Sgt. Ron Taylor.

Martianna Santos told officers three men had tried to pick a fight with her and her family, Taylor said. Officers learned the three assaulted Santos’s husband, Juaquin Linares, who was punched in the face and head and sustained non-life-threatening injuries.

Santos was pushed to the ground during the altercation while trying to protect one of her children, who was in a baby stroller, Lawrence said. Three children, two girls and a boy, were there at the time, police said.

While officers were investigating that assault, Deschutes County 911 dispatchers got a report of a stabbing at NE Ninth Street and Emerson Avenue, about three blocks north and two blocks east of the initial call, the sergeant said.

As more officers arrived, they learned Joshua Temple Garrett, 29, had been stabbed twice in the left arm and Michael Shane Stell, 36, was stabbed once in the abdomen. Both were taken by Bend fire paramedics to St. Charles Bend with non-life-threatening injuries, Taylor said.

An extensive investigation determined that Linares stabbed Garrett and Stell “while defending himself and his family from an unprovoked physical assault” from Stell, Garrett and a third Bend man, Clarence William Wetherald Jr., 40, who was unhurt during the fight, Taylor said in a news release.

Stell, Garrett and Wetherald were taken to the county jail and booked, Stell and Garrett on third-degree assault charges and Wetherald on four counts of menacing. They were no longer in jail custody later Saturday.

Taylor said more charges were possible as the investigation continues.