Man charged after Anoka stabbing victim crashes car into liquor store

A 19-year-old in Anoka is facing attempted murder and assault charges for a stabbing earlier this week that left a man critically injured.

Thomas Lee D’Angelo was charged Friday with attempted first-degree murder and first-degree assault.

Court documents state that police were called to a liquor store just off East River Road and Ninth Avenue on Wednesday on a report of a man who’d crashed his car into another vehicle and the store. Dispatchers noted the driver was saying he’d been stabbed.

There, officers found the 28-year-old man “bleeding profusely” from stab wounds to his leg and chest, a criminal complaint states. He was hospitalized in critical condition, underwent several hours of surgery and remains in the intensive care unit on a ventilator.

Before the victim lost consciousness, he told officers that D’Angelo stabbed him, the complaint states.

Officers learned that D’Angelo lived just a few blocks away along Fifth Avenue and eventually took him into custody.

According to charging documents, D’Angelo claimed he and his friends met the victim last summer and the victim made a comment about a girl. D’Angelo went on to accuse the victim of improper relationships with girls and said he and his friends “don’t really like people like that.”

He then explained that he called the victim to a nearby park to confront him but then stabbed him with a butcher knife, saying, “I think he deserved to feel every bit of pain I could give to him” and “killing him would be too easy,” the complaint adds.

D’Angelo made his first court appearance on Friday and faces up to 20 years in prison on each charge.