You can often learn much about a person from his hobbies. Take 19-year-old Tyrik Haynes of Middletown, N.J. One of his most beloved pastimes is adopting stray cats, dousing them with accelerant, and setting them on fire.
Obviously he was just getting warmed up for his next act of depraved indifference, this one directed toward a member of another species that is alien to him – human beings. CBS News reports that around 4 p.m. on Thursday, Haynes entered a Bed Bath & Beyond, approached a total stranger who was pushing her baby in a stroller, and began plunging a knife into her.
View slideshow: Act of depraved indifference by animal abuser
He thrust his blade at the woman, 29-year-old Kerri Dalton, a dozen times, puncturing both her lungs in an apparent random attack. The young mother was Medevaced to a local hospital, where she is reported in stable condition. For his part, Haynes is being held on $1 million bail on an attempted murder charge.
The manager of an adjacent store in the strip mall told reporters that Haynes had been lurking about on the sidewalk prior to the attack.
The guy was standing in front of our store, but…he was kinda weird. We didn’t pay no mind to it because we didn’t know who he was. He was a guy with a hood and then he walked over there and then he came like nothing happened and he just walked that way and then the lady came screaming, saying ‘Can you help me, can you help me. A lady got stabbed.’
Employees of a second store in the mall, this one a Petco, told police about Haynes’s peculiar fascination with torching felines. They said that the suspect would come in and stare malevolently at the cats.
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