Neighbors hear woman screaming during fatal stabbing

William Mitchell saw the desperate, screaming woman hanging out of the second- floor back window of the neighboring apartments.

Mitchell, 59, was on the second floor of his house on Reinhard Avenue about 6:25 p.m. Thursday when he heard the commotion coming from the rear apartment on the 1000 block of Parsons Avenue and looked out his window.

“He reached his hand around her throat and pulled her back and she yelled, ‘ Help, I can’t breathe,’” Mitchell said. “All I saw was fear in her eyes and this guy steadily choking her, pulling her backwards.”

Mitchell said he yelled across to the man, “Hey, leave her alone!’”

But ominously, the man closed the window and pulled the curtains shut. A woman in a neighboring apartment called 911.

When Columbus police and fire paramedics arrived, they found a woman who was “cut up pretty bad”, said Sgt. Stan Latta, supervisor of the second- shift homicide investigation unit.

The 30-year-old woman was transported with multiple stab wounds to her chest and throat.

She was pronounced dead about 6:50 p.m. at the OhioHealth Grant Medical Center.

A man at the secondfloor apartment in the 1000 block of Parsons Avenue was taken into custody for questioning.

Latta said detectives are trying to determine what prompted the stabbing.

The death is the city’s 38th homicide of 2018 based on police totals.