FAYETTEVILLE -- The man was lying on Razorback Road, a jacket wrapped tightly around his bleeding neck.
Kyle Coney, a senior at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, was driving home after baseball practice Thursday night and stopped at the scene after the vehicle in front of him did, he said.
When Coney got out of his vehicle, he saw a man lying in the road. A woman was cradling the head of the bleeding man. Nearby, another man was also cut across the neck, Coney said.
Other drivers stopped and called police, describing the scene as bloody and chaotic, a Fayetteville police dispatch record shows.
A confrontation among people at a nearby homeless encampment had spilled into the street, police said Friday.
Four people were taken to Washington Regional Medical Center in Fayetteville, said Capt. Matt Mills of the University of Arkansas Police Department. One of the people who went to the hospital was not hurt, witnesses and police documents said Friday.
Police said Thursday that a man with a machete cut two people during a fight among homeless people at 7:18 p.m. Thursday on a wooded property located north of 1032 S. Razorback Road. The property is leased by the university.
Patrons at a bar and grill across the street from where the attack occurred rushed out to help, Coney said. About 15 people ran into the woods to find the man who wielded the machete, Coney said.
They found Ashley Kyle Pettey, 36, lying on the ground, and one man held Pettey down until the police arrived, Coney said. A machete was nearby, according to police documents.
Police arrested Pettey at the hospital Thursday, where he had wounds on his left eye, according to a preliminary police report.
Pettey was booked Friday into the Washington County jail and was being held in lieu of $15,000 bond. An Oct. 5 arraignment date was set. Pettey, who police said is homeless, is accused of first-degree and second-degree battery and aggravated assault.
Joseph and Rachel Ferguson stood Friday near the trail leading to their campsite in the woods and said they were among the victims of the machete attack.
About five people live in tents in the woods there, Rachel Ferguson said, but Pettey is not one of them.
"We don't know this guy," she said.
Several tents, complete with fire pits, were erected in two clusters in the woods, on the same property where David Henry Fox, Jr., was killed by blunt force trauma in January. Police said earlier this year that the area is known to be a homeless campsite.
The Fergusons' friend, whom they said Pettey also attacked, lived in one of the tents, Rachel Ferguson said. He had not been released by the hospital Friday afternoon, they said.
Joseph Ferguson had white bandages around his neck, and his left arm was in a sling Friday. His throat had been cut, his arms were cut multiple times and the index finger on his right hand also was cut badly.
Rachel Ferguson, who was not hurt, said her husband needed 14 stitches plus internal staples on one cut.
Their friend's wounds were more serious, she said.
The Fergusons did not identify their friend because they were not sure he would want them to, they said.
Mills would not confirm the names of the victims Friday because the names are part of an active investigation, he said.
According to a preliminary police report, Pettey was at his campsite in the woods Thursday when three people confronted him, saying they thought his camp would attract unwanted attention and telling him to move it.
A fight broke out between Pettey and the three people, the report says. During the fight, Pettey took out a machete with an 11-inch blade, striking two people, according to the report.
The Fergusons and their friend were walking from their tents to go eat Thursday when they heard Pettey talking loudly, Rachel Ferguson said. The group went to investigate and found Pettey seemingly arguing with himself, she said.
The trio went up to Pettey and asked why he was there, Rachel Ferguson said. Pettey took out a machete and began swinging it, she said.
Joseph Ferguson said he didn't realize how hurt he was until he tried to fight back and blood spurted out of a wound on his neck.
"I thought for sure I was done for," he said.
Despite his wounds, Ferguson was able to walk around Friday. But he said that after the attack, he and his wife want to leave the campsite.
"I still think about it," Joseph Ferguson said. "It freaked me out."
Metro on 09/05/2015