Man charged with attacking 18-year-old with machete
A 20-year old man has been charged with attacking an 18-year-old woman with a machete Thursday afternoon in an Apex neighborhood, police said.
According to police, the woman was walking home from a school bus stop at about 3 p.m. when she was stabbed by Neel Salil Mehta outside a home at 1837 Venezia Way.
Apex Police Chief John Letteney said the woman was badly hurt "with a significant amount of blood loss and some severe injuries." She was taken to Duke Hospital, where she was in stable condition Thursday night.
Mehta was taken by police to WakeMed with minor injuries that appeared to be self inflicted, police said.
Witnesses said the assault lasted several minutes. Police said that Mehta dropped the weapon when confronted by officers and was taken into custody.
One neighbor, who did not want to be identified, told WRAL News that he witnessed the attack and saw Mehta stabbing the woman repeatedly. The neighbor said he walked toward Mehta with a two-by-four. He said he did not approach Mehta, for fear of his own safety, but the threat of walking out with the board did not stop Mehta from the attack.
Neighbors said they were shaken and scared following the incident.
“I was making sure that everybody was ok, the friends that I know where they were in that neighborhood in that section, because I was walking around and that’s when they had put up the tape and I had seen what was going on and I was just terrified that something bad happened and that they weren’t ok,” said resident Emily Klimedinest."It is very quiet here, so quiet that there is nothing that happens."
Police said neither person lived at the address where the incident happened.
Police said the woman is a student in the Wake County Public School System.
Police said that the attack was not random and that Mehta and the woman had previously dated.
Mehta is charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury and is scheduled to make his first court appearance on Friday.
