A 19-year-old Boynton Beach man is facing an attempted first-degree murder charge in the stabbing of a woman in her apartment Tuesday night, city police said.
The accused, Benito Felipe Crisanto, reportedly left the apartment with about $3,000 in cash that the victim and her boyfriend kept in their bedroom at Gateway Boulevard and Congress Avenue, a police stated.
It wasn’t clear from the report, however, whether robbery was the only motive behind the attack. “I have to make a sacrifice,” the victim quoted Crisanto as saying while he was stabbing her, according to the report.
Besides attempted first-degree murder, he faces charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and robbery with a deadly weapon, police said.
The victim was admitted to the Delray Medical Center, said police, who described her condition as stable.
Police say they took Crisanto — known as “Phil” — into custody at a restaurant near the apartment complex on Congress Avenue. When officers asked Tuesday night who had stabbed her, she replied “Phil,” according to the police report.
The boyfriend, told officers he and Crisanto had been friends for about two years. He said the victim told him Crisanto, who lived near the apartments and the restaurant, had texted her to say he was coming to say goodbye before he moved to New York, according to the report.
The victim’s boyfriend said he was in the living room wearing headphones and playing on his computer when he heard her scream from the bedroom — something like, “Take the money,” the report said. He turned and saw Crisanto with a gun in his hand about two feet away.
The boyfriend told police he grabbed the gun and Crisanto fell to the ground while he tried to wrestle the weapon back, according to the report. The boyfriend was able to disarm Crisanto and ran outside, not knowing where his girlfriend was, police said.
The woman told police she tried to run out after her boyfriend, but Crisanto grabbed her by the waist, pulled her back and started stabbing her, according to the report.
The boyfriend told detectives he had $2,000 to $3,000 hidden in a Prilosec medication box in the top nightstand drawer, according to the report. The money was never found, but there was a blood trail leading from the bedroom entrance to the drawer, police said. There was also a large amount of blood found on and in the drawer and on the medication box, according to police. The report did not specify whose blood it was.
After she was stabbed multiple times, the victim told police she grabbed Crisanto and told him he could take the money from the night stand. He walked behind her with a knife as she went to the drawer and handed the money to him, according to the arrest report.
