SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Sept. 18, 2022 (Gephardt Daily) — A man police say stabbed a stranger who was sitting on a downtown park bench Saturday has been booked into jail.
Suspect Mario Fresques — who turned 32 Sunday (today), his probable cause statement says — was booked on two charges of aggravated assault resulting in serious bodily injury, a second-degree felony.
One charge is related to the Saturday stabbing. The other was for a Sunday, Sept. 11, stabbing at the same location.
Fresques was arrested Saturday after the apparently random assault on a male victim at 300 South and 500 West, in Salt Lake City.
“Officers contacted the victim, who had multiple stab wounds, including to the neck,” says a statement filed by an officer of the Salt Lake City Police Department.
The victim “was transported to the hospital and had to undergo surgery. Witnesses pointed out Mario Fresques to responding officers as the person who stabbed” the male victim.
A witness reported “he saw the victim sitting on the bench and saw Mario come up behind him and stab him in the neck for no reason,” the police statement says. The witness “reported to officers that the victim tried to fight back, but appeared to be stabbed again.”
That witness and a second one “pointed out Mario to officers, who arrested him. As officers were arresting Mario, he spontaneously stated that he could not be arrested because police had not recovered the knife and that officers would never find the knife.”
Fresques “also fit the description of a suspect that stabbed (another victim) on 9/11/22 at the same address,” the police statement says. The Sept. 11 victim, a female, “was stabbed in the chest and required emergency medical treatment on scene and critical transport to the hospital.”
Detectives conducted a follow-up interview with the victim in the earlier stabbing, who “positively identified Mario as the suspect who stabbed her, from a photo lineup.”
The police statement says the current felonies were committed while the suspect was on probation or parole, and there is “substantial evidence” to support the current charges.
The statement says Fresques “is homeless and is attacking other homeless individuals in the area of 500 West and 300 South.”
A judge ordered Fresques be held without bail.
