Deputies Seek Burglar Who Stabbed Girl at Home

Sheriff’s deputies were searching Friday for a man who stabbed a 16-year-old girl while he was burglarizing her family’s Mission Viejo home.

The girl reportedly required emergency surgery because an artery in her neck and shoulder area had been severed in the 1:30 a.m. attack, according to sheriff’s Lt. Richard J. Olson. “But she is going to be OK,” he said.

The girl’s identity and the name of the hospital are not being disclosed for security reasons, Olson said.

The ordeal began when the girl’s mother awoke at 1:20 a.m. because she heard the stairs creaking, she told police. She did not get up, thinking that one of her two daughters was going downstairs.

The intruder, who had come up the stairs, entered the 16-year-old daughter’s bedroom.

When she awoke and saw a man in her room, she began to scream. He darted to the bed and started stabbing her with a small kitchen knife, Olson said.

Her mother heard the screams and started toward the bedroom, only to hear the intruder run down the stairs and slam the front door.

After seeing that her daughter was injured, she called police. The daughter was treated by paramedics at the house, then taken to the hospital.

“It appeared that the suspect probably entered the house through a front garage door that was left open,” Olson said, adding that an unspecified amount of money was stolen from a purse downstairs.

Police doubted that the knife attack was related to the stabbing death of a 12-year-old boy in his East Tustin home on June 2. The boy’s sister discovered his body on the kitchen floor, face-down in a pool of blood with a knife nearby.

“We have no reason to believe there is any relation,” Olson said. Lt. Randy Blair concurred, saying, “At this point, there are too many dissimilarities.”

In an effort to generate leads on Friday’s assault and burglary, police will be conducting a computer search of incidents in Mission Viejo and surrounding communities within the last six months to look for similarities.