A seemingly random attack at a Marietta storage facility last week left a man with multiple stab wounds and befuddled the police officers who rushed to help him.
The injured man, identified by police as 22-year-old Saul Higuera Jimenez of Marietta, was later determined to be the suspect in the attack and tried to disarm officers when they attempted first aid, according to Marietta police spokesman Officer Chuck McPhilamy. Jimenez is accused of hitting a man with a hammer, who then stabbed him with a pocket knife in self-defense, McPhilamy said.
“The scene couldn’t have been any crazier if you had scripted this for a movie,” he said in an interview with Channel 2 Action News.
McPhilamy said the victim was standing in his unit at Public Storage, a self-storage facility next to a Mazda dealership on Cobb Parkway, and was “minding (his) own business” when he was approached by Jimenez on Sept. 25.
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According to his arrest warrant, Jimenez followed two men into the gated facility and began looking for a woman, whom he believed was kidnapped. He allegedly began attacking the victim with a hammer after thinking he heard her inside the storage unit, the warrant states.
Another man, who was not injured, tried to intervene but ended up walking away before the arrival of Cobb police. Officers were dispatched to the business around 2:30 p.m. after getting reports of a person banging on storage units with a hammer.
“When we arrived at the facility, we’re now getting multiple other, different calls,” McPhilamy said. “Calls about a possible stabbing, as well as there is now an individual walking down Cobb Parkway, presumably away from the scene, who is just covered in blood.”
The bloodied man was presumed to be the aggressor and was ordered to the ground by a second unit of officers responding to the scene. At the storage facility, officers turned their attention first to Jimenez’s wounds, McPhilamy said.
“While our officers are starting to render aid, he begins to attack the officer and tries to take the officer’s gun away from him while he is actively bleeding from multiple stab wounds,” he said.
Jimenez was placed in handcuffs after officers used a Taser to subdue him.
Police eventually learned the man detained on Cobb Parkway was the good Samaritan who tried to step between Jimenez and the victim to stop the violent fight, according to McPhilamy. The condition of the victim was not disclosed.
Investigators do not know what may have motivated Jimenez in the alleged attack, but McPhilamy said there is no merit to his claims about a missing woman.
Jimenez is being held in the Cobb jail on a charge of aggravated assault related to the hammer attack, as well as a charge of criminal damage to property in the second degree. He is accused of breaking a lock to one storage unit and damaging a turkey fryer and a wooden desk kept inside.
His bond is set at $20,000 on those charges, which are both felonies, court records show.
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