A 22-year-old man was arrested early Wednesday on suspicion of assault after a fight in west Aurora turned into a triple stabbing, according to court documents.
Paramedics took three people to the hospital who were injured in the stabbing late Tuesday night, including the man who was arrested and two people he allegedly attacked, police said.
Aurora officers arrested the man at the hospital just after 1 a.m. Wednesday, when staff medically cleared him, police said.
The triple stabbing happened earlier that night in the 14500 block of East Alameda Avenue. When officers arrived at about 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, they found the three stab victims, according to an arrest affidavit from the Aurora Police Department.
The block is home to an apartment complex, a liquor store and multiple restaurants.
Two groups — a mother and daughter, and a boyfriend and girlfriend — got into a verbal altercation that escalated when the daughter and girlfriend began physically fighting, police spokesperson Matthew Longshore said in an email to The Denver Post.
During the fight, the 22-year-old boyfriend stabbed the 23-year-old daughter, Longshore said. The man then stabbed the woman’s 42-year-old mother as she attempted to defend her daughter, and the mother stabbed him in return, Longshore said.
Paramedics took all three stabbing victims to the hospital with varying degrees of injuries, Longshore said. As of Wednesday afternoon, the daughter remained hospitalized, and the boyfriend had been arrested on suspicion of first-degree assault.
The girlfriend, a 21-year-old woman, sustained minor injuries from the fight but was not taken to the hospital.
Longshore said the daughter was under investigation for multiple charges for her role in the fight, but did not specify what those charges were. The woman’s mother is not currently under arrest or facing charges, he said.
The boyfriend told police that the daughter started the fight and punched his girlfriend. He claimed that he tried to push her away while holding a multi-tool in his other hand, but police wrote in his arrest affidavit that he later admitted to stabbing the daughter with that tool.
Security video also showed the daughter initiating the fight, according to court documents.
The mother was slashed in the abdomen, and the daughter was stabbed in the left forearm, abdomen and both sides of her back, police said in the affidavit. At least one of the daughter’s stab wounds was deep enough to require surgery.
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