Two stabbed, two beaten in Pocatello altercation

POCATELLO — Two men were stabbed during an altercation that left two other people beaten in Old Town early Saturday morning.

Police said they’re still investigating the incident and as of Saturday night they had not arrested anyone, though officers had tracked down and interviewed those involved.

One of the victims, a Pocatello woman, provided the Journal with her account of what happened, stating she and her boyfriend were attacked by four men while walking home.

The woman, who didn’t want to provide her name out of concerns for her safety, said she and her boyfriend had left the First National Bar on West Center Street and were walking back to their apartment around 3 a.m. when a vehicle stopped next to them in the 300 block of West Center and four men got out and confronted them. The woman said the men accused her and her boyfriend of breaking into local businesses.

She said she then pulled out her cell phone and began recording the incident on video. One of the four men slapped the camera out of her hand and two of the men jumped on her boyfriend and started beating him up, she said.

When she told the men to get off her boyfriend, the two other men knocked her down and began beating her, the woman said.

She said the two men were on top of her and she feared for her life. The woman had a 5-inch self-defense knife in her purse that she was able to reach. She then thrust the knife toward the men who were on top of her, stabbing them both.

But they didn’t get off her until a nearby resident who saw the beating shot a pistol into the air, causing three of the men to flee on foot, the woman said.

One of the men who’d been stabbed did not flee until the individual with the pistol told him to leave at which point the stabbed man got into the car that the four had arrived in and drove away.

Pocatello police arrived soon afterward and began investigating the incident. The woman and her boyfriend were interviewed by police before being driven via private vehicle to Portneuf Medical Center. She was treated and released for a black eye and a severely bruised wrist that is now in a brace. Her boyfriend was treated and released for a dislocated shoulder and bruises around his neck.

The two individuals who were stabbed eventually also arrived at PMC via private vehicle. One of them was treated and released but the other man remains at the hospital, police said.

He is expected to survive.

Police said they spent most of Saturday tracking down everyone involved in the incident. But police are not saying much about what happened except for confirming that two men were stabbed in an altercation involving multiple people.

Police did say that there is no threat to public safety as a result of the incident.

The woman who was with her boyfriend credits the man who fired the pistol with possibly saving her and her boyfriend’s lives.

“If not for his gunfire, they would not have stopped (beating us),” she said. “They would have pried the knife out of my hands and beat us until we were nothing.”

She said the incident has traumatized her not just because she was attacked by four strangers, but also because she’s always viewed Old Town as a safe place.

“We would walk around in Old Town all the time,” she said. “But this has made us think that maybe we shouldn’t do that. Now there’s this little bit of what if.”

This article was originally published in the Idaho State Journal. It is used her with permission.