Clematis stab victim: 'I was wet with blood'
Attack shines light on homeless problem downtown
WEST PALM BEACH — Amy Manucy and her 14-year-old daughter, Susannah, drove down from Mount Pleasant, S.C., to spend Susannah’s spring break with Amy’s sister, who lives in Palm Beach Gardens. Susannah attends boarding school, so the trip gave mother, daughter and aunt a chance to catch up.
But their happy reunion would
turn into a night of terror in West Palm Beach, one that nearly killed Manucy and spurred Mayor Jeri Muoio to launch a task force to recommend ways to address homelessness and mental illness in the city and county, where merchants and residents have been pressing for action after years of frustration.
On the night of March 9, a Friday, the Manucy trio came to South Dixie Highway to dine at Grato, a trendy Italian restaurant. Then they wanted a taste of downtown, so they went to Clematis Street, the city’s retail and entertainment hub for locals
and tourists.
Rocco’s Tacos was crowded and noisy and they wanted to talk, so they walked another block. They found an outside table at Sushi Yama, at 330 Clematis, and ordered beverages. They were the only ones in the sidewalk seating area.
“We were just talking,” said Manucy, a graphic designer in her 50s. “I don’t think we were sitting there long. Then all of a sudden I felt something hit me from behind. Out of nowhere I just felt this thud.”
It didn’t feel like what you might imagine a stabbing would feel like, she said. “It was more like getting hit in the back of a head with a baseball bat or something like that. I didn’t know what it was.
“My sister looked at me and started screaming, ‘Oh my God, she’s been stabbed, oh my God.’ I stood up and looked around. The odd thing was, I saw this guy, it turned out to be the guy who stabbed me. He just went over there — there were other tables — he pulled a chair out and sat down and watched everything unfold, I guess. My sister was screaming. My daughter was screaming. Everyone was screaming.”
A gruesome scene
“Somehow, I can’t even remember anymore ... I must have fallen on the ground, or my sister helped me to the ground. I think my sister tried to drag me into the restaurant. There was a point, she felt like we were sitting ducks. There was nobody at any of the other tables — just him. And he was sitting there with the knife and she didn’t know if he was going to stab me again or her or my daughter.
“We were out there for a few minutes alone, just the three of us and him. But he was very quiet. He sat down and was observing the whole thing. He didn’t speak. I didn’t hear him speak at all.”
Soon, though, “people were coming,” she said. “I was on the ground between two tables. A man came and grabbed my neck,” to apply sure and reduce the bleed- “He was squeezing on my neck. Everybody was so nice. There were people down by my feet, patting my leg. By this time I was lying down, I wasn’t really seeing what was going on. Then a guy came out of the restaurant and he (the attacker) was just sitting there and he (the guy) tackled him and held him down. And some girls took my daughter inside. Susannah was the one who called 911.”
Manucy said she felt pain, but it was a type of pain she couldn’t describe because of the moment.
“It was just this surreal experience. The way I tried to think about it was, I’ve always read, if an emergency situation happens, try to stay as calm as possible. I remember deliberately thinking this: ‘Try and stay as calm and quiet as I can.’ ”
She knew she was bleeding. “When I stood up from the table, it was all over my shirt, all over my hand, I was wet with blood. My sister had my head in her lap and her pants were all covered with blood. I was in this dreamy place.”
Suspect no stranger
Downtown security guards detained the suspect, Chad Sanjay Bailey, until police arrived. The knife was found on the scene. In an interview at police headquarters, Bailey, 23, confessed to the stab- bing. He said he did it because he was “tired of being picked on for being homeless,” the police report said.
He faces a charge of attempted first-degree murder.
Bailey is known to the business community on Clematis. At 1:20 a.m. on Feb. 28, while patrons dined at Rocco’s Tacos, he grabbed a heavy glass candle off a side- walk table and hurled it at the bar, shattering $921 worth of liquor bottles, police said. Police charged him with throwing a deadly missile and resisting arrest with-
‘It was more like getting hit in the back of a head with a baseball bat or something like that. I didn’t know what it was.’ Amy Manucy
Stabbing victim
out violence.
“The man who (allegedly) committed the crime is a guy I’ve seen many times,” Raphael Clemente, execu- tive director of the Down- town Development Authority, told city commission- ers at a meeting March 12. “I don’t know if he’s home- less or not, but it was clear to me from the first time I saw him that he was men- tally ill.”
Just hours after the first incident, Mayor Muoio called a press conference in the City Hall courtyard off Clematis Street, to announce that the number of homeless living on West Palm Beach streets dropped 14 percent from the previous year. The mayor, who has been bombarded with complaints about not removing homeless people from the commercial strip, went through a litany of programs the city is undertaking to address homelessness. It’s a nationwide problem and there are limits to what she can do because being homeless is not a crime, she said.
Police presence
The Monday after t he stabbing, Muoio took to the microphone again, announcing a newly formed working group with the Homeless Coalition, The Lord’s Place, The Lewis Center, St. Ann Place, downtown merchants, residents, police and the Downtown Development Authority, among other groups, to come back within 60 days with a set of recommendations. “We are moving forward with addressing this. We understand your frustration. We have the same frustrations,” she said. “Also, we know police need to be more visible and will be more visi- ble and available to people on Clematis Street.”
She added afterward that there are uniformed police on Clematis in addition to undercover officers and a security squad in bright yellow shirts. If people see a problem, they should let police know, she said. Mental illness is another issue that needs to be addressed, she said, expressing frustration that the city gets the heat for problems it lacks authority or resources to fix on its own.
“The gentleman who per- petrated the incident last Friday had been arrested the week before, had been released that same day. He had been given a psych evaluation at the jail and was released. I have no control over that. Secondly, we have very few facilities in our county to serve the home- less. We have the Lewis Center, one place. The county was supposed to open two others. That hasn’t happened. We have no place for someone to go tomorrow night. If you were homeless tomorrow, I couldn’t tell you where to go. People keep looking to the city to solve a problem that’s a national problem, that’s multifaceted, that has to be addressed in a regional way.”
Clemente insisted the city’s hands are not entirely tied.
“I want to be careful that we keep the issues of home- lessness and criminal behavior separate,” he told the commission. “Being home- less is not a crime but breaking the law is. Public intox- ication, open use of illegal drugs, fighting, urination, aggressive and lewd behavior, grabbing food right off people’s plates at cafe tables, skipping out on a dinner tab, unfortunately these things are happening downtown.
“For a long time now, we’ve heard from business owners and residents about how the actions of some who are on the streets of downtown, homeless or not, are impacting their businesses, quality of life and confidence in this place.”
Amy Manucy stayed overnight in St. Mary’s Medical Center and returned home to South Carolina. Her neck remains stitched and bandaged and she hasn’t felt up to working.
She understands homelessness and mental illness are difficult and widespread problems. It’s a big reason she left her hometown of Washington, D.C., she said.
“I got attacked by a homeless man,” the 5-foot-2-inch woman said. “It was the same thing: Out of nowhere in broad daylight, I was walking in Farragut Square park. He just grabbed me and started punching me in the face and it was horrible. I was little and he was big.”
Other times, homeless people would scream at or heckle her, she said.
“It’s really sad,” she concluded. “I don’t know what the answer is.”