WAILUKU, Maui (AP) — Complaints about odor from his mother’s cooking prompted a Lahaina man to stab an upstairs apartment neighbor, a Maui Police Department testified.
Jacobs Khoi Duong Duy, 26, at a preliminary hearing Wednesday was ordered to stand trial in the knifing of a 64-year-old woman. He is charged with second-degree attempted murder.
The neighbor was stabbed as she sought refuge in the home of the property manager of Honokowai Kauhale, a 184-unit state affordable housing project, police said.
Detective Brandon Koyama testified Duy told him his mother was cooking dinner Saturday night. The cooking odor angered the neighbor and she cursed at Duy’s mother, he told the detective.
Duy said the woman walked down the hall to the resident manager’s home and he ran after her with a knife, Koyama said.
Property manager Deborah Schichtel testified she was in her living room when the woman came to the door at about 8:15 p.m. and said, “They’re going crazy over there.”
“She seemed a little agitated,” Schichtel said.
Schichtel promised to investigate the commotion and told the woman she would get dressed. She was in her bedroom when she heard the woman yell that Duy had a knife. Duy threatened to kill the woman, Schichtel said.
As Schichtel pulled the woman into her bedroom, Duy’s arm came forward and he stabbed the woman, Schichtel said.
An emergency room doctor told Koyama that the woman was stabbed in her upper-right back. The knife punctured her right lung.
“It caused massive amounts of bleeding, heavy bleeding into her chest cavity as well as her right lung,” Koyama said. “They had to remove almost two pints of blood from her chest.”
Deputy Public Defender Annalisa Bernard asked Schichtel about previous run-ins.
“You had never heard (the woman) harassing their family or yelling at them about their culture or food smells?” she asked.
Schichtel said she had not witnessed harassment.
Duy was jailed at Maui Community Correctional Center with bail set at $250,000.
