BANGOR, Maine — While an eyewitness said the fatal stabbing on First Street early Tuesday involved a group of people — one with a weapon — defending a woman, police remained tight-lipped Wednesday about what they think happened.
No press conference is planned, no arrests have been made and no information about the weapon is being released, Bangor police Sgt. Paul Edwards said.
“I can’t comment on evidence in the case,” Edwards said.
Deputy Police Chief Peter Arno confirmed Wednesday evening that no one had been arrested in relation to the stabbing.
Police said Tuesday that the state medical examiner’s office determined that the death of Andy D. Smith, 38, was a homicide and that the cause of death was stabbing.
Police were called around 1:45 a.m. Tuesday to the area of 69 and 71 First St. and found Smith with a stab wound. He was taken to Eastern Maine Medical Center and died that morning.
Smith’s friend Eugene “Shawn” Cox, a resident of 69 First St., said he heard Smith arguing with a woman he once lived with out in front of his apartment building just before the stabbing and watched from an upstairs window as they exchanged punches.
Another woman, who lives at 71 First St., “came out with a two-by-four and she hit him,” apparently in defense of the first woman, Cox said. “He got the two-by-four away from her and she called for her friends. They all started on him.”
Seconds later, Smith was bleeding from a wound to his left rib area and was trying to get away. Cox said he did not see who stabbed his friend. He grabbed a pipe and ran downstairs and said he encountered his bleeding friend at the bottom of the steps.
The group of people whom the woman called to help her had been partying all night long, two neighbors and Cox said.
“It’s an ongoing thing every day,” he said.