LITTLE ROCK — A woman, convinced that her fiance was cheating on her, stabbed him in the groin area early Saturday morning, severing a major artery and killing him after she caught him at another woman's house, neighbors who witnessed the ordeal said.
"It was a horrible sight," said neighbor Mary Tolbert, who waswoken up by the dispute about 2 a.m. "She really didn't know she cut him that bad."
Police said Saturday that they do not know how many times the victim, Holbert Chisim, 28, of Little Rock, was stabbed. Police spokesman Terry Kuykendall confirmed that Chisim was stabbed in the leg.
The slaying was one of two in the early morning hours inNorth Little Rock on Saturday, bringing the city's total to 12 for the year, just one slaying away from last year's tally. Kuykendall said the homicides did not indicate that the city is seeing a rise in homicides, noting that for the past five years, the city has seen anywhere from six to 13 homicides.
"I don't think, necessarily, our homicide rate is increasing,if you look at it over five, six years," Kuykendall said, adding that two of the city's homicides have been ruled justifiable.
Tolbert, who lives at 1403 Vine St. in North Little Rock, heard people arguing outside her house, which is in front of an apartment building that shares her address.
Tolbert said she could hear Chisim pleading with his fiancee.
"Baby, let's just talk about this," Tolbert heard him say.
But his fiancee, 34-year-old Kashawnda Lynch, also of Little Rock, kept chasing him with a knife, yelling at him, Tolbert said.
"'I don't know why you keep messing with these girls,'" Tolbert heard her scream.
Tolbert, who knows Chisim's family, said he had been visiting a female in the apartment building for the past week.
At some point as he was being chased around his car, Chisim slipped and fell backward. As he was falling, witnesses said Lynch reached and stabbed him between the legs in an upward motion.
Chisim tried to get up, but fell on his back, arms outstretched, Tolbert said, adding that he was still pleading with his fiancee.
"The paramedics came and they took off his pants and his underwear," to get to the wound, said Saniyyah Thompson, Tolbert's granddaughter.
Once they did: "Blood just shot up in the air ... and he didn't say no more," Tolbert said, adding that she figures Chisim's clothes initially helped control the bleeding. "He was gone."
On Saturday afternoon, Chisim's white Buick Park Avenue sat parked, with its windows down, in the driveway of the apartment building. Its left rear tire was flat.
"He didn't die at the hospital. He died right out there," Tolbert said, pointing to a spot in the yard, wet from water she said authorities had sprayed on the ground to wash away Chisim's blood.
Chisim's slaying is the second this year in the 1400 block of Vine Street. In March, Marcus Hickman, 36, was shot to death outside a house at 1407 Vine St.
Tolbert said the neighborhood had a bad drug problem. "I'm just trying to get up out of here," she said.
Lynch is being charged with second-degree murder and is being held without bail in the Pulaski County Regional Detention Facility.
Kuykendall said it was typical for someone to be held without bail on a second-degree murder charge.
Police are also investigating a homicide that happened in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn.
As officers were finishing work at the scene of Chisim's death, 34-year-old Steven Eugene Caldwell of North Little Rock was lying dead in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn at 120 W. Pershing Blvd.
According to a news release, North Little Rock police responded to a report about suspicious people in the parking lot near some buses owned by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga shortly after 3 a.m.
When they arrived, officers found Caldwell dead in the parking lot.
Police are not releasing details of Caldwell's death.
The university's football team, which played the Arkansas Razorbacks in Little Rock on Saturday, was staying at the hotel for the weekend, a hotel receptionist said.
"It just happened to happen in the parking lot where the buses were parked," Kuykendall said.
Police do not believe Caldwell was staying at the hotel. Authorities obtained a description of the suspect from a hotel security video and are looking for a lightskinned black or Hispanic male in his early 20s. The suspect was wearing baggy blue jeans, a white polo shirt with tan stripes and a ball cap. Kuykendall said police didn't know whether the suspect is an Arkansan.
Police are also looking for a vehicle, described as a bronze Chrysler New Yorker or Chrysler Fifth Avenue.
Arkansas, Pages 19, 22 on 10/07/2007