Teen arrested, accused of stabbing two near Rotary Park
A homeless man is accused of stabbing two men near Rotary Park in Butler shortly before 5 p.m. Friday, according to city police.
Dartavion Anthony Johnson, 18, was charged with two counts of aggravated assault, two counts of simple assault and two counts of recklessly endangering another person Friday.
Johnson was taken into custody Friday and was awaiting arraignment by a district judge, according to a news release from Butler city police.
Emergency crews responded around 4:40 p.m. to the area of Rotary Park and the Chestnut Inn for a report of “possibly multiple stabbings,” according to scanner reports.
A 25-year-old man and a 32-year-old man were found to be stabbed, police said. The men were taken by ambulance from the scene to a medical helicopter, which flew them to a Pittsburgh hospital, according to city police.
Their injuries are not life threatening, chief Robert O’Neill, said in the news release.
“No further information will be released on their condition at this time,” he said.
Richard Ealy, of Butler, told the Eagle on Friday that the victims are his friends. One is a Butler resident, but he was unsure of where the other man resides, Ealy said.
“I am worried. Going to be on my way down to Pittsburgh,” Ealy said.
Ealy said the afternoon confrontation was related to an incident that happened earlier in the day, between one of the victims and two other people.
Ealy said the others came to the park armed with a knife and a lead pipe. Ealy said he and his friends were attempting to take the lead pipe from one of the men when his friends were stabbed. Ealy was unharmed.
Another witness, Rachel Detrick, said she saw multiple people try to disarm someone with the weapons prior to the stabbing.
“They were trying to get the knife off of him,” Detrick said. “All the people were trying to get all the stuff off of him. There was a bunch of people over there who were trying to get everything off of him, like the knife, the pipe and everything.”
Josi McChesney was alerted about the stabbing by her mother-in-law, Tammy Ealy, as McChesney’s fiancé was in the vicinity at the time. According to McChesney, her fiancé tried to disarm the attacker before the attacker tried to stab him.
“My man was trying to take the pipe off of the dude,” McChesney said. “(The man with the knife) ended up trying to stab my man.”
McChesney said her fiancé was not harmed, but another of the men was harmed shortly afterwards.
McChesney says that she applied pressure to the wounds of the second stabbing victim with her hoodie until paramedics arrived.
“As soon as I came around, I saw him. I took my hoodie off,” McChesney said. “I put it on his back underneath his shirt and applied pressure until the paramedics came.”
According to eyewitness reports, the first victim was stabbed in the stomach, while the second was stabbed in the back.
Tammy Ealy said her cousin was the second stabbing victim.
“I saw them going across street to go get the pipe off the dude, and (he) got stabbed from it,” said Ealy. “None of us saw the second one. All we saw was him laying on the ground, and then, he had two stab marks in his back.”
Anthony Kelly, another friend of one of the stabbing victims, said he saw the person, who had the knife and pipe Friday afternoon, earlier that day at the Save-A-Lot at Pullman Square, where he recalled getting into a physical altercation with him.
The scene near Rotary Park was clear by 5:35 p.m.
Butler Township Police, state police, Butler Ambulance Service and Butler Bureau of Fire also responded to the scene.
Eagle staff writers Austin Uram and Tracy Leturgey contributed to this report.
