It started as an argument over a vaping device. It turned into a bloody knife fight, with one victim stabbed multiple times and a second man threatened with death, Plymouth police said.
Now, a 20-year-old Plymouth man and a 19-year-old Wilbraham woman are being held without bail, facing multiple felony charges related to the attack. They are scheduled to appear at dangerousness hearings next week.
The stabbing victim, 20-year-old Robert Palingo, of Plymouth, underwent emergency surgery at South Shore Hospital in Weymouth for treatment of multiple severe wounds, police said. His condition on Wednesday was unknown.
The incident began after a group of three young men and a woman spent a seemingly uneventful evening at the R1 Indoor Karting facility in Lincoln, Rhode Island, on June 17.
But things started to go south, police reported, when Palingo realized he’d left his vape inside a locker at the recreation complex.
Maxwell Orszulak, 20, of Plymouth, one of the men on the trip, volunteered to fetch it. But when Orszulak wouldn’t give it back, the two began tussling in their car, police alleged.
Palingo told police he didn’t realized he had been stabbed until the group arrived back at the Plymouth home of another friend, Matthew Brown, where they were going to hang out.
Brown’s grandmother, Carol Almeida, told police she heard yelling and screaming and called 911 when Brown told her that “one of his friends had been stabbed and was bleeding badly.”
When police arrived at the Columbus Road home, Palingo was being placed on a stretcher.
Brown and Joshua Kruysman, another friend who had been on the Rhode Island trip, blamed Orszulak, who was at the house with his friend, Kyla Stickney, of Wilbraham.
When Brown demanded the couple leave, Stickney allegedly threatened to murder him.
“I’ll kill you right now,” she said, according to the police report.
“What, are you going to stab me, too?” Brown reportedly asked Stickney.
Stickney told Brown she had a knife in her purse, he told police.
“Brown was placed in fear during this moment,” Plymouth Police officer Samantha Pelrine wrote in her report.
Police went to Orszulak’s house on Hood Drive but both he and Stickney had been taken to Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Plymouth for treatment of their own injuries.
He had a cut on the outside of a finger that required multiple stitches and a splint, police wrote. The report doesn’t say whether Stickney also was injured.
Police seized a black Toyota in the driveway, where they found blood and a knife, they reported.
They then visited South Shore Hospital to interview Palingo. But he was about to go into surgery, having suffered multiple wounds on the left side of his body including on his arm, thigh, lower abdomen, and back. He had numerous defensive wounds on his left hand, police wrote.
Pelrine described the injuries as likely to cause long term disfigurement and scarring.
Orszulak and Stickney pleaded not guilty Wednesday in Plymouth District Court to four felonies, including assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and armed assault with intent to commit murder.
The two were ordered held until dangerousness hearings next week.
Their lawyer, Stacie Cooper, did not immediately return a call for comment.
Andrea Estes can be reached at andrea@plymouthindependent.org.