Mt. Pleasant bar stabbing suspect headed to trial
Farmington Hills man accused of assaulting three people
The Farmington Hills man accused of stabbing three people during a fight at Wayside Central is headed to trial.
Octayvious SanchezLewis, 19, was bound over
Tuesday morning by 21st Circuit Court Judge Sara Spencer-Noggle on three counts of assault with intent to commit murder and two counts of carrying a dangerous weapon with unlawful intent. If found guilty on the more serious charge, he faces a sentence of up to life in prison.
Not in dispute was whether Sanchez-Lewis stabbed three people, one of them a friend of his. The issue was whether he’d acted in self-defense.
Tuesday’s first witness, one of the men who Sanchez-Lewis is accused of stabbing, told the court that in fact he’d punched
Sanchez-Lewis in the side of the face after running across the bar after seeing his friend in trouble.
One of Sanchez-Lewis’ attorney, present in the courtroom, asked if that constituted a sucker punch. The man, who was stabbed in the groin area and thighs, said he didn’t think so.
During his closing statement, the attorney said that Sanchez-Lewis was under attack from three or four different people and was trying to defend himself when he stabbed three people. One required emergency surgery for near-fatal abdominal wounds. The third, who was at the bar with Sanchez-Lewis, required surgery to repair tendon damage.
Isabella County Chief
Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Alan Reimers said that Sanchez-Lewis had taken two knives — one a thin utility blade in his wallet — to the bar looking for trouble and that he’d clearly targeted the first two men. He described the third victim as in the “wrong place, wrong time.”
Spencer-Noggle bound
the case over based on testimony given during the first day of the preliminary exam on March 12 that rather than trying to escape the situation that Sanchez-Lewis stood his ground.
Binding the case over requires a much lower threshold than would securing a guilty verdict in trial. The prosecutor only needed to establish a probability that a crime was committed. At trial, the prosecution must establish guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
No date is currently set for the trial.
The incident took place after midnight Feb. 23, and Central Michigan University alerted the campus community to an at-large assault suspect via text message.
Originally, SanchezLewis was described as a Native American. After Sanchez-Lewis’ identity was made public, that original description drew criticism as being based on prejudice. At the time, police officials said they went out an alert based on the information they had.