Attempted Murder Is Crime Looking for a Victim : Courts: There is a suspect, witnesses, even a videotape of the stabbing, but the man who was attacked is nowhere to be found.

Prosecutor Greg Walden has a crime--the attempted murder of a man inside a 7-Eleven store in Oceanside.

He has a suspect, who was arrested a mile away.

He has witnesses: half a dozen clerks and customers who watched--and cowered--as the assailant stabbed the victim with a knife, striking him 10 to 12 times in the head, neck and body.

Walden even has a videotape of the bloody attack--from the store’s security camera, which recorded the entire episode.

What Walden doesn’t have is a victim.

The unidentified man, believed to be a transient, walked out of the store, with blood gushing from his neck, and hasn’t been seen since.

Walden has checked the morgue and hospitals all around the area, but hasn’t found the man. “He could very well be out below some bush or drainage culvert, dead,” said the San Diego County deputy district attorney. “Nobody has seen this guy. He simply vanished. He may have gotten in a car and driven off somewhere.”

If the victim is found dead, Walden will charge 24-year-old Rodney Lee Graham with murder. But, for now, all he can do is prosecute Graham for attempted murder.

Graham, a Carlsbad resident whose occupation was not known to authorities, was ordered Wednesday to stand trial in Superior Court and is being held in the Vista detention center on $250,000 bail.

Walden doesn’t need the victim to prosecute Graham. There’s plenty of evidence the crime occurred--including the videotape. Between that and witnesses’ accounts, the prosecutor offers this replay of what happened about 5:30 p.m. Dec. 6:

“You see people purchasing milk and cigarettes and beer, and next you see the victim walking into the store, asking for help. He said someone’s pursuing him from outside.

“Then you see Mr. Graham coming in from the parking lot, pulling a knife from his back, jumping on top of the victim and stabbing him in the upper thigh.

“At one point, Mr. Graham says, ‘I want my money,’ or something to that effect. (The victim was defiant.)

“The victim then goes behind the service counter where the clerks are, trying to get away or get help, and Mr. Graham pursues him, knocks him down and begins to stab him again, right at the clerks’ feet.

“The victim assumes the fetal position on the ground and the defendant straddles him with his legs, sits on his chest and repeatedly stabs him, 10 to 12 times, with a sheath knife, a hunting-type knife. The wounds most notable to the witnesses are on the head and a gushing wound in the neck, and in the lower thigh.

“The people inside the store were in shock. They couldn’t believe it. They tried at first to pull the suspect away from the man, but when they saw he had a knife, everyone ran for cover.

“Then the defendant gets up, walks out of the store, and the next thing you see is the victim staggering toward the door. The witnesses said there was blood gushing from his neck. The victim asked, ‘Am I going to die?’

“They told him to lie down, and they’d get help, but he walks out the door, and when they go out to look for him, he’s gone, vanished.”

Someone inside the store then called 911, and Oceanside police found the suspect at a gas station near El Camino Real and California 78, less than a mile from the convenience store.

Authorities have searched the area around the 7-Eleven store--on the fringe of a residential area, and a block from a steep hillside--and have found no sign of the victim, Walden said.

An attempt will be made to have a frame of the videotape enlarged and enhanced so it can be published and trigger leads as to the victim’s identity.

The victim, Walden said, appeared to be Asian or Latino with Asian features, about 5-foot-10, 165 pounds with shoulder-length hair and a mustache.

“Maybe someone will see the photograph and tell us who he is--and where he is,” Walden said.