DAYLIGHT ASSAULT: MAN STABS WOMAN UNDER BRIDGE

Police continue search for unidentified male suspect who ran off.

WEST PALM BEACH — A bizarre and unexplained stabbing shattered the calm of a sunny Sunday morning in a downtown setting many residents and visitors favor for a waterfront stroll or bike ride.

A woman riding her bike at 11 a.m. was stabbed under the Royal Park Bridge at Flagler Drive and Okeechobee Boulevard, police say.

A man pushed her off her bicycle and then stabbed her, according to West Palm Beach Police spokesman Sgt. David Lefont. The man ran off, and police were still searching for him.

The victim, who was not-identified, was hospitalized in stable condition, Lefont said Sun- day evening.

The incident surprised West Palm Beach resident Victor Gupta, who said he takes regular walks in the area.

“I thought it was pretty safe,” he said. “I guess I’ll watch out.”

The stabbing comes almost exactly a month after another seemin g ly random stabbing in another part of the city’s downtown, the Clematis Street

dining and entertainment hub.

At night in a restaurant’s sidewalk seating area, an attacker stabbed graphic designer Amy Manucy, who was visiting family from Mount Pleasant, S.C.

Downtown security guards detained suspect Chad Sanjay Bailey, 23, at the scene. He confessed to the stabbing and said he did it because he was “tired of being picked on for being homeless,” the police report said.

He was charged with attempted first-degree murder.

“I don’t think we were sitting there long,” Manucy later told The Palm Beach Post. “Then all of a sudden I felt something hit me from behind. Out of nowhere I just felt this thud.”

She described it “like getting hit in the back of a head with a baseball bat or something like that. I didn’t know what it was.”

In Sunday’s incident, the adult male attacker did not stay at the scene and remained at large. Law enforcement officials worked at the scene around the bridge into the afternoon. Some were wearing dive gear.

Anyone with information regarding this crime is asked to call the West Palm Beach Police Department at 561-8221900 or Palm Beach County Crime Stoppers, 800-458TIPS.

‘I thought it was pretty safe. I guess I’ll watch out.’ Victor Gupta, West Palm Beach resident

MELANIE BELL / THE PALM BEACH POST West Palm BeachPolice are continuing to search for a male suspect in the Sunday morning stabbing of a bike rider in West Palm Beach.

MELANIE BELL / THE PALM BEACH POST West Palm Beach police and divers wait for the tide to change before they can safely enter the Intracoastal waters to look for evidence under and around the Royal Park Bridge on Sunday afternoon after a woman was stabbed.