Suspect in Stabbing a Mystery to Neighbors : Crime: Few had talked to the Reseda teen-ager, 17, who is accused in the attack. But Edith Rose, his 74-year-old victim, is a fixture in the neighborhood who ‘would take in everyone, anyone.’

The teen-age boy knocked on the door, then introduced himself and asked for a glass of water and the use of a telephone.

Edith Rose didn’t know the boy, but had seen him around her Reseda neighborhood.

Once inside her home, the boy demanded money, police said.

And when the 74-year-old widow refused, detectives said, he attacked. First, he punched her repeatedly. Then he grabbed a butcher knife and chased her through the house, stabbing her 20 times.

When she finally collapsed in her kitchen, police said, the boy handcuffed her to a drain pipe.

All this for a robbery that netted less than $10 and some credit cards that investigators would later recover in the trash can of a nearby convenience store.

Rose was found hours later, bleeding but still conscious, by a neighbor who had crawled through an unlocked window looking for her.

“They brought her out to the ambulance and just before they put her in I saw the remains of a handcuff on her left arm,” Los Angeles Police Officer James LaForce said. “I tried to take the handcuff off and I couldn’t. It was jammed up.”

The stretcher was lifted into the ambulance and LaForce jumped in behind it. “Do you know who did this?” he asked Rose.

At Northridge Hospital Medical Center--amid the noise of doctors and nurses working feverishly to save her life--he asked her again.

“Who did this to you?” LaForce asked. “She gave me his first name, which I heard clearly, and the last name, which was kind of garbled.

“I asked her if she knew where he lived,” LaForce said. “She said no, but that he lived somewhere in her neighborhood.”

LaForce said memories of his own 72-year-old mother, who died in February, flooded his mind as he worked to glean information from Rose.

“I was glad that something like this didn’t have to happen to my mom,” LaForce said. “I was grateful that she died of a heart attack rather than some guy trying to rob her like this.”

Rose’s stammered recollection of the name led police to arrest a 17-year-old neighbor at his job at a McDonald’s Restaurant on Sherman Way in Reseda.

He faces charges of attempted murder, residential robbery and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Police plan to ask that the youth, whose name is being withheld because he is a juvenile, be tried as an adult.

Anne Lipman, a nursing supervisor at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, said Rose was released Friday and taken to an undisclosed location. She said her condition was improving. Her brother and sister have been at her side, hospital officials said.

Police Department Detective Robert Johansen said that while most of the stab wounds were superficial, Rose suffered a deep wound to her abdomen.

“There were also stab wounds to her hands, indicating she tried to push him away,” Johansen said.

Although they will not confirm whether the boy has confessed, authorities say information he gave led investigators to a trash can at a 7-Eleven Food Store, where Rose’s credit cards were uncovered.

The youth also told investigators that he had purchased the handcuffs several years ago, Detective Rick Swanston said.

Police have recovered a knife they believe was used in the attack, and fingerprints found on it are being analyzed to determine whether they match those of the youth.

Johansen said he believed the boy lived with his mother and sister on Wynne Avenue, about a block from Rose’s house on Strathern Street where Rose has lived for more than 30 years.

The youth arrested in the attack was something of a mystery in the neighborhood. Many people saw him pedaling about on his mountain-style bike, but few people had talked to him.

Resident Rick Kahana said the boy would come by his house occasionally and ask for a beer, or a ride someplace.

“He was kind of a loner, kind of off-beat,” Kahana said. “I don’t remember seeing him with people his own age. He would just kind of pop in from out of nowhere and ask for beer.”

Once he asked Kahana, who teaches kick boxing in his garage, to train him. When Kahana told him he needed to get his mother’s permission, the boy left and never brought the subject up again.

Rose, on the other hand, is a fixture in the well-groomed suburban neighborhood.

Her house is known for blocks as a place where no one was turned away.

“She would take in everyone, anyone,” said Anthony Federico, 69, who has lived next door to Rose for 32 years.

Kahana, who lives around the corner, recalled how Rose helped neighbors haul bricks for damaged walls after the Northridge earthquake. Jerry Andrews said she would stock her refrigerator with beer for him when he came by to chat.

Louie Sprenzel said she always give him rides to evening church functions because he is blind in one eye and can’t see after dark. And when his wife was sick, she brought over a flower arrangement freshly plucked from her garden.

Rose is legendary in the neighborhood for her gardening. She tends not only her own yard and flower beds but the ones at the New Apostolic Church across the street. Twice a year, she cuts her lawn short and reseeds it, a feat that has made her lawn green even in the winter.

She has lived alone at the house since her husband died 12 years ago. Just last week, her beloved cat--her only company--died.

But she always had her neighbors.

Once a month, they gather at a different restaurant to have dinner, and to catch up on each other’s lives. Recently, the subject was crime.

“We just talked about how dangerous it is getting and how stupid (criminals) are for messing up their own lives by doing wrong,” Kahana said.

The attack on Rose occurred just weeks after the West Valley Division became the first station in the city to create the “Gray Squad,” a special task force that stresses crime prevention among senior citizens and addresses a host of other needs for the elderly.

Officer Mark Pryor said residents in Rose’s neighborhood are already organizing a Neighborhood Watch program, and that next week he and City Councilwoman Laura Chick plan to walk the area and drum up support for the program.

But sometimes, Pryor said, Neighborhood Watch is not enough.

“All it takes is somebody like this, a neighbor, to do this,” Pryor said. “And the best lookout in the world is not going to spot a crime when it’s a neighbor.”