A Beaver Bay man is accused of stabbing a man several times inside a home and then telling a deputy, “I just killed [him],” according to a criminal complaint.
Samuel Osborne Stenberg, 21, faces a felony count of attempted second-degree murder, a felony count of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon and a misdemeanor count of domestic assault. The complaint was issued Oct. 5 in Lake County District Court.
According to the complaint, deputies and an officer were sent at 12:42 p.m. Oct. 2 to a report of a stabbing at a home in Beaver Bay. The officer found a man lying in a bedroom, covered in blood, with several holes in the back of his shirt.
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A State Patrol trooper found Stenberg walking nearby with blood on his hands and face and detained him. She found a small steak knife covered in blood in his jacket pocket and a pair of scissors in his sleeve, the complaint says.
Stenberg told a deputy he had stabbed the man because “he was going to stab me first if I didn’t,” according to the complaint. He said he took one of the small knives from a drawer and stabbed the man, whom he described as unarmed as far as he knew, and said, “I tried to kill him, hopefully he’s dead.”
The man told a deputy that Stenberg started punching him for no reason, that he then realized Stenberg had a knife and was stabbing him, and that he hid under his bed until Stenberg left. He had five stab wounds in his back, a cut earlobe and a cut about 2 inches long on his head, and he was flown to a hospital in Duluth, the complaint says.
The attempted murder count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, according to the complaint.
