A BMX-riding man with a lengthy criminal history has been arrested after he allegedly stabbed 11 people in a random frenzy in Albuquerque, New Mexico, police said.
Tobias Gutierrez, 42, was booked into jail on charges of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, Albuquerque police said Monday.
The string of stabbings, which occurred within hours of each other starting Sunday morning, appeared to have been committed at random along Central Avenue, one of the city’s main thoroughfares.
“There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason,” police spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said of the attacks.
The stabbing spree began around 11.15 a.m. when cops found a man suffering a laceration to his hand.
About an hour later, another call came in about a stabbing outside a smoke shop near the University of New Mexico where the suspect had asked the victim for money and yelled obscenities before stabbing them.
Police were called to two more stabbings along Central Avenue over the next two hours before another call came in at 2 p.m. when two people suffered neck wounds outside a convenience store.
Two additional calls came in 20 minutes later — and the final one involved a stabbing outside a restaurant.
Gutierrez was taken into custody after cops saw him dumping something into a trash can right before officers stopped him. Officers later recovered the knife used in the stabbings.
Gutierrez’s rap sheet includes federal felony offenses ranging from burglary to battery and possession of a controlled substance, according to court records.
He has also previously been charged with driving while intoxicated.
In 2014, the suspect failed to appear in court for driving on a revoked license, records show. He told the court via a handwritten note that he was in federal custody in another county and was making an effort to better himself while incarcerated.
His federal prison sentence stemmed from a case where he entered a tribal casino just outside Albuquerque while armed with a revolver and ammunition.
Records show he was released from federal custody in 2020.
Why is he still alive?
The only answer is KNIFE CONTROL. NOBODY “needs” a kitchen or utility knife with anything longer than a 6 inch blade. Look at military style edged weapons and you will see that virtually all of them have blades of 7″ to 7 1/2″ and up.
Why? The ONLY purpose for a knife that size is to harm other people, just as this man did. It’s also clear that these larger knives are being deliberately marketed precisely for that purpose. They are made to look like a military knife, to function like one, and are advertised based on their suitability for such use and using violent imagery redolent of war movies and computer games featuring violent content. Stabbings, in this country, actually are a more common form of assault than shootings and even in countries, such as the UK and Japan, with strict gun control laws, stabbings remain a significant cause of death and injury, making it literally MORE dangerous to live in the UK than in the USA. Hundreds of thousands have died in ethnic violence in places such as Rwanda, where the most common form of armament are knives, particularly long knives marketed under the broad term of “machetes” (from the same root word as “macho”, reinforcing the popular connection between assertive, successful masculinity and violently employed edged weapons).
This MUST stop. What is needed is COMMON SENSE KNIFE CONTROL. Nobody wishes to take knives away from anyone with a legitimate need for one, but the notion that it is somehow “okay” to walk around carrying an edged weapon more suitable to a Medieval knight than to a business person or worker with an occasional need to cut some tape or a string is absurd and is making our streets, our buildings, even our homes unsafe. Contact your state and federal representatives NOW and demand COMMON SENSE KNIFE CONTROL. For your safety. For the safety of your children.