WATERVILLE — Two men were sent to hospitals with serious stab wounds early Thursday after an apparent fight outside The Chez Paree, a nightclub in the city’s South End.

Police Chief Joseph Massey said officers were called to the Water Street bar around 1 a.m. and found no one there.

They followed a trail of blood and found a man in a nearby apartment building at 8 Sherwin St., slashed across the chest so deeply that his ribs were visible, Massey said. Another man there had been stabbed in the elbow and groin, he said.

“Both of them were bleeding severely,” Massey said. “They were not able to give us any information — no indication of how or who stabbed them. As a matter of fact, one male was sort of combative, uncooperative.”

One man was sent to Maine Medical Center in Portland; the other, to MaineGeneral Medical Center’s Thayer Unit here, according to the chief.

Massey would not release their names. He said the man who was stabbed in the chest was a witness to a stabbing on April 8 during a fight on Spring Street.

Meanwhile, as police and emergency workers attended to the stabbed men early Thursday, a police officer found a man in a stairwell at the back of The Chez Paree with a small, bleeding wound on his forehead, Massey said. The officer asked if he had been involved in the fight or knew anything about it. The man told police he had been in the Chez earlier and some men had been giving him a hard time, so he left the bar, then saw two groups of people fighting — one outside the door and another up the street, he told police.

“The officer thought he was being evasive,” Massey said. “They also felt he wasn’t telling them everything he knew and suspected he was involved somehow when the two people were injured.”

Police ran his name, Albe Lagasse, 44, of Bangor, through a data system and learned he was wanted on a warrant for failure to appear on a charge of theft by deception, so they arrested him, Massey said. They also noticed that Lagasse was associated with motorcycle gangs, Massey said.

“So right now, the investigation continues,” he said. “The very difficult part here is that whatever happened … no one is willing to give us any information. A few witnesses we did interview either didn’t know anything or didn’t want to say anything.”

He said police planned to re-interview the men who were stabbed, as well as others police talked to after the stabbing.

Massey asked anyone with information about the stabbing to call police at 680-4700. Detective Dave Caron is investigating the case.

“He was at the scene all night processing the blood,” Massey said of Caron. “We certainly did an extensive search for a weapon — obviously a knife or something capable of inflicting slash wounds — and we haven’t come up with that.”

Outside The Chez later Thursday morning, the nightclub’s janitor, William Wood, 61, was mopping up blood spattered on the sidewalk. He said stabbings happen “off and on” in the area.

“I’ve been the janitor at The Chez for over 30 years,” Wood said.

Jay Boucher, 29, stood watching as Wood slopped soapy water on the sidewalk. Boucher said he was worried about the stabbing.

“I just think it’s a very bad thing that this happened where I have to live,” he said.

The blood left a trail that went south of The Chez and up the a on Sherwin Street to the apartment building.

Blood was spattered on the steps. The apartment house door, which has a window, was locked; but blood was visible on the floor inside.

Amy Calder — 861-9247

acalder@centralmaine.com

 

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