An unidentified man was taken to the UVA Medical Center on Tuesday afternoon following an apparently self-inflicted attack that left him with serious wounds in the abdomen.
According to the Daily Progress, witnesses spotted the man just after 5pm, clutching his side and staggering along the sidewalk near Buford Middle School. The passersby called police, who soon arrived along with rescue squads and blocked off a two-block portion of Ninth Street. An ambulance took the victim away around 7:15pm and he entered surgery shortly thereafter. As of Wednesday morning, media reports indicated that it was uncertain whether the man’s wounds were the result of a stabbing or a shooting.
On Wednesday afternoon, City spokesman Ric Barrick told C-VILLE that, although the man had said he heard a noise and felt pain while innocently walking down the street, then saw two men running away, forensic workers investigating his Orangedale Avenue home found a note he’d left for his wife in which he talked about hurting himself. It was determined that the man’s wounds were in fact from a stabbing, not a shooting, and that he had lifted his shirt to administer the wounds himself.
Barrick said further that the man is a known "cutter" and had recently been released from rehab.