Two men stabbed outside Waterville bar; Bangor man a person of interest

WATERVILLE, Maine — Two men are in the hospital after a double stabbing at a bar in Waterville early Thursday morning, according to police.

Authorities were dispatched to the Chez Paree bar on Water Street around 1 a.m. after a fight was reported in front of the bar, according Waterville police Chief Joseph Massey.

When officers arrived they didn’t see a fight in front of the bar but they did notice “considerable blood on the sidewalk,” the chief said.

“There were only a few people [in the bar], everybody seemed to be dumbfounded,” Massey said.

An officer followed the blood on the sidewalk up the street to an apartment complex and found two men on a living room floor bleeding heavily, according to Massey.

One man was slashed across his chest so severely that his ribs were exposed, while the other man was slashed across his elbow and his groin, Massey said.

Both men were initially taken to MaineGeneral Hospital in Waterville, and the man who was slashed across his chest was later taken to Maine Medical Center in Portland, Massey said. The injuries are considered serious but not life threatening.

While some officers were tending to the victims an officer located an adult male in a back stairwell at the apartment complex who had a cut on his forehead. Able Lagasse, 44, of Bangor, had an outstanding warrant for failing to appear on a theft charge, so police arrested him.

Police identified Lagasse as a person of interest in the stabbing after he told police he had been at the bar Wednesday night, Massey said.

“Where it stands right now, as soon as we can re-interview the two victims we’ll see if they can shed any more light on how they received their wounds,” the chief explained. “We’re certainly not calling [Lagasse] a suspect.”

“When we ran him, a caution came up indicating that he was a member of a biker gang,” Massey said of Lagasse’s identification.

Lagasse was intoxicated at the time of his arrest, so police will conduct more interviews with him as well, Massey said.

The victim who was transported to Portland was a bystander in an incident earlier this month in which Michael Reed, 26, was stabbed in the back and struck with a piece of wood outside a bar, Massey said.