By Hudson Sangree
hsangree@sacbee.com
A stranger jumped into a woman's car and stabbed her as she waited for her husband to finish work at a Florin-area gym on Saturday, authorities and the victim's husband said.
Omar Anguiano said his wife came to pick him up from the 24 Hour Fitness club on Florin Road near Stockton Boulevard where he works as a membership counselor.
She pulled into the parking lot and sent him a text message at 8:48 p.m., he said. Moments later he heard her screams and a horn blasting.
A man had jumped into the backseat of his wife's car, grabbed her by the neck, and stabbed her repeatedly, including in the stomach, Anguiano said.
The 24-year-old mother of two young children was in stable condition at Kaiser Permanente's South Sacramento Medical Center on Monday, he said.
Anguiano said there was no apparent motive.
"He wasn't trying to steal anything. He didn't take anything. She had a purse with cash in it. It was in the back seat where he could have taken it, but he didn't."
"He ran into the dark," Anguiano said.
Sacramento Sheriff's Department spokesman Deputy Jason Ramos said Anguiano's account corresponds with initial law-enforcement reports.
Deputies responded to a call at 8:56 p.m Saturday from a gym employee who said a woman, the wife of another employee, had been stabbed in the stomach and arm, he said.
Ramos described the suspect as an Asian male, 5-foot-2, wearing a blue tank top. The assailant ran away but left his flip-flops behind in the parking area, Ramos said.
"He ran out of his shoes," the deputy said.
Officers established a perimeter around the parking lot and the nearby Walmart, he said. A California Highway Patrol officer may have spotted the suspect about 9:30 p.m. but the man ran away, he said.
Investigators are still trying to obtain security video from 24 Hour Fitness and Walmart, he said.
He called the area near the fitness center a "hub of criminal activity" and suggested the attack may have been an attempted carjacking. "It's very unusual," he said.
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