LYNN, MASS. (WHDH) - Ashley O’Brien said she was outside watering her plants when she saw a man walking down the street in a green sweatshirt that she did not recognize. She said he had a kitchen knife on him and made eye contact with her.
O’Brien said she froze in that moment and felt like something was not right. She went inside and called 911.
“He was just kinda sauntering through the street, just kinda bobbing and weaving and swinging his arms around, and he had a kitchen knife in his hand,” O’Brien said. “By the time he was in front of my house, he was just kinda dancing around with it and he started stabbing all these bushes, just kinda guiding it along.”
O’Brien said she made the call around 11:50 a.m. and her friends were able to get a picture of police surrounding a man in a green sweatshirt on the ground.
Rhonda Deparolesa also spotted the suspect.
“I was in my living room on my chair and I saw like someone jump and he had a green shirt on,” Deparolesa said. “When I looked out, he was laying flat on the bulkhead.”
Deparolesa said she immediately called for her husband.
“He noticed the knife with blood on it, a big knife,” Deparolesa said. “I saw him walking and he was trying my door. Thank God I locked my doors.”
Deparolesa dialed 911.
Officers eventually caught up to the man, hiding near a shed in the woods. The man was pulled out of that area, walked to waiting cruisers, and taken into custody.
At that time, no one knew the man had any connection to a crime in Danvers.
Lynn resident John Bossi’s camera traced the moments before the man was roaming the streets.
“He was driving on rocks, gravel, something cars are not supposed to go by,” Bossi said.
Bossi’s camera shows the man driving in the woods behind his house. A tow truck took the car away, but what’s left in the neighborhood is fear.
“I’m nervous, very nervous,” Bossi said.
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