Police: Stabbing suspect confessed

Woman who survived attack at Manchester home able to ID man despite ski mask, authorities say

The man was masked when he crouched near a basement door, then allegedly sneaked into a Manchester home to stab a woman in the stomach seven times, records show.

But the gravely injured victim told her mother she knew the man, as he had allegedly been stalking her at her job at a nearby convenience store, police said in an arrest warrant affidavit issued for the man.

The 23-year-old victim was inside her house on Oakland Street on the night of Feb. 16, when the man wearing a ski mask came inside, stabbed her repeatedly and then ran off, according to police.

Police said in the warrant affidavit for the attacker’s arrest that surveillance footage from the area captured the moment a masked man walked in the door. On that footage, police said, “one can immediately hear someone screaming as if in terror.”

The attacker, later identified as 35-year-old Damion Davis, of Hartford, had been a customer at the store where the victim worked, according to police, as noted in a warrant affidavit for Davis’ arrest.

Just hours before the brutal stabbing, Davis had allegedly spent at least 40 minutes inside another store on Oakland Street, talking to the owner and the victim’s cousin. Davis allegedly told the man that he was dating the victim and knew where she lived and worked, police said in the warrant affidavit.

Davis “made a lot of inappropriate sexual remarks about” the victim, police said in the warrant affidavit.

Another of the victim’s relatives was in the building where the victim lives at the time of the attack. She heard her cousin screaming, police said in the warrant affidavit.

That relative told police she ran into the kitchen and “saw a male actively stabbing (the victim) in the stomach,” police said in the warrant affidavit.

The relative tried to grab the attacker’s hands, but he ran out the

door when he looked up and saw her, police said.

The relative provided police with a description of the attacker and investigators obtained surveillance footage from a security camera at the store where the victim worked, from the second store Davis had been in and from a neighbor’s Ring doorbell camera, records show.

The surveillance videos from the time of the attack show a masked man crouching near the basement doors, then walking up to a side door, going inside and running out shortly after, police said.

The victim, who was rushed to Hartford Hospital with seven stab wounds, called her mother before she went into surgery, police said. The victim’s cousin told investigators that the victim told her mother, who does not speak English, that she knew her attacker, according to the affidavit.

She told her mother that “he comes into (the store) all the time and talks to her,” her cousin told police, according to the warrant affidavit.

Investigators also analyzed several footprints in the dirt outside the victim’s home and made fliers identifying Davis as a person of interest, according to the warrant affidavit. Detectives spotted Davis, whom they recognized from surveillance images from the second store, and brought him in for an interview, police said.

During the interview, Davis admitted to going into the victim’s home, stabbing her and running away, according to the warrant affidavit. He allegedly told police he threw the knife he used near a bus stop on the northwest corner of North Main and Main streets, police said.

Investigators later found the weapon — a purple and black folding knife with a less than 4-inch blade — in that spot, police said.

Davis, of 141 S. Marshall St. A2, Hartford, is charged with first-degree assault, home invasion, first degree burglary and second-degree stalking, police said.

He is being held in lieu of $1 million bail and is scheduled to appear in court next on March 8, court records show.