Portland police arrested a local man for allegedly stabbing another man in the Bayside neighborhood Monday.
Robert Jerome, 39, was arrested for aggravated assault Monday afternoon after he attacked a 47-year-old near the intersection of Portland and Adler streets, a police spokesman said.
Police found the 47-year-old bleeding in the street from slash wounds on his chest and hands after being called to the area around 3 p.m., according to Lt. Robert Martin.
Jerome allegedly also choked the man, who police did not name. Paramedics treated the 47-year-old at the scene for injuries that weren’t considered life-threatening, Martin said.
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Soon after the altercation, Jerome was arrested at his “nearby” residence, Martin said. The reason for the the attack is being investigated but police believe the pair know each other.
Jerome, who was also charged with violating a conditional release, is being held at the Cumberland County Jail, Martin said.
The stabbing comes as the latest in a string of violent crimes in Bayside in recent months. Through June and early July, there were two other stabbings and two shootings in the neighborhood, which has a large homeless population, houses many of the city’s social services and accounts for a disproportionate number of its police calls.
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Over the years, people struggling with homelessness and addiction have been concentrated in a few blocks between the Oxford Street homeless shelter and Preble Street Resource Center, as other shelters have closed. And the area has attracted drug dealers, human traffickers and other “bad actors,” city officials have said.
City Manager Jon Jennings is seeking to open a larger, new homeless shelter near the Westbrook city line, but the plan has been met with concern from people in the neighborhood around the proposed site.
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Some residents Nason’s Corner are worried that the new shelter will simply transplant the problems that surround the existing one in Bayside — something city staff say won’t happen.
Police ask anyone who might have witnessed the assault to call (207) 874-8575.
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