Father Recounts Night of Terror in Attack on Children

There was confusion in the night--screams, children stirring. Dennis Meissner stumbled out of bed late Monday and groped his way down the hallway of his Vista home to discover every parent’s nightmare.

Amber, his 10-year-old daughter, was clutching her throat. “Daddy, I have a very sharp pain in my neck,” she said.

Then she dropped her hand. “I saw this gaping hole,” said Meissner. “It was as big around as my finger. I could have stuck my finger in her throat.”

An intruder had stabbed Amber and her 2-month-old brother, Travis. The man apparently entered the home on Monte Vista Drive through an unlocked back door about 11 p.m. Monday while the family of seven slept.

The children were rushed by Life Flight helicopter to Children’s Hospital, where they were listed in good condition late Tuesday.

Meissner said his infant son will be well enough to return home either today or Thursday, but Amber will stay longer to recover from surgery to repair the gaping, 5-inch-deep wound that has left doctors “flabbergasted” because it missed the arteries and other vital organs in her neck and chest.

“It’s a miracle,” said Meissner, a devout Lutheran. “By the grace of God, she’s alive.”

Police have arrested Paul Joseph Boyd, 44, a transient, in connection with the stabbings. He was held at the downtown County Jail on suspicion of attempted murder and burglary after San Diego County sheriff’s deputies found him wandering around the 300 block of West Broadway in Vista shortly after the attack, police said.

It was the presence of a transient that first raised suspicions in the modest Vista neighborhood late Monday night. Meissner’s next-door neighbor summoned sheriff’s deputies after a scruffy man walked up to their house, said Ricky Snow, who lives with the Meissner family.

Stalked Through Home

“Some scroungy-looking guy who was carrying a cat came by the neighbors’ just before the attack,” said Snow, who was not at home at the time of the stabbing. “He wanted to buy their house, but he didn’t look like the type who had that kind of money.”

About the time that a deputy drove up to talk to the next-door neighbors, Meissner was being awakened to find that someone had stalked his home.

Meissner said the man apparently entered through the back door. Before he went into the children’s bedroom, the intruder apparently took $20 and some car keys off a desk.

Then, the intruder opened a kitchen drawer and took out a butcher knife.

Meissner said he later found the knife outside the door of a bedroom where his three other children were sleeping, a discovery that leads him to believe the man intended to stab everyone in the house.

But the cries coming from Amber and Travis apparently startled him.

“They really screamed, and my daughter said she heard someone running through the house,” Meissner said.

The screams also awoke Meissner and his wife, Joanne, who took the infant back into her bedroom to nurse and comfort him. She charged back down the hall when she realized he was wounded.

‘Was Going Berserk’

“My wife came running back into the room and said, ‘Look at this!’ ” said Meissner. “She had taken the baby’s blanket away and he was bleeding in the neck.”

Meanwhile, Amber moved her hand and showed her daddy that something was wrong with her neck.

“I just was going berserk,” he said. “I didn’t know what to think. Did something bite her or what?”

Tuesday night, less than 24 hours after the stabbing, Meissner said his anger over the incident had abated, especially since his children’s condition had improved. He talked about the terror in terms of Christian philosophy.

“I hate the deed that he did,” said Meissner. “There’s no doubt about that. But the man himself needs help very badly.

“The way I look at it, if my children would have died in the incident, I know where they would be, with the Lord in Heaven. That’s just the way I feel.

“But that man, if he died right now without repenting of what he did, there would be no hope for him.

“He needs our prayers just as much as my daughter does.”