ORLANDO, Fla. — A 28-year-old man is facing attempted murder charges after a stabbing outside a Taco Bell in downtown Orlando Friday night, but witnesses say video of the confrontation does not tell the full story.
Deaveon Jaquan Brown faces several charges after police responded to the area of Orange Avenue and Central Boulevard around 10:30 p.m. Friday.
Officers found a man suffering from multiple stab wounds. The victim was rushed to the hospital for surgery and was reported to be in critical condition.
Video obtained and verified by Channel 9 shows two men fighting outside the Taco Bell. One man, wearing a white shirt, can be seen fighting with another man wearing black shorts before the stabbing occurs. Channel 9 did not air the stabbing itself.
Jonathan Witt, who lives downtown, recorded the confrontation and witnessed the stabbing.
“It was just a crazy thing to see firsthand,” Witt said.
But Witt said the video does not show what happened in the minutes leading up to the fight. According to Witt, the man who was eventually stabbed had been threatening the other man before the confrontation turned physical.
“He had the knife originally, and he was over here for like 15 minutes screaming at this one guy telling him he was going to kill him, all this stuff,” Witt said. “As soon as he went to go fight the guy he dropped the knife. So the guy after getting his life threatened the whole night and the big guy is approaching him and about to swing on him, he picked up the knife and that’s when I started recording.
Witt said he then watched the stabbing unfold.
“I seen him get stabbed like three, four, five times,” he said.
Another witness, Tyler Clark, who works at Harp & Celt about a block from the stabbing, also described seeing the man he identified as the victim acting aggressively earlier that night.
“I saw him pull up on his bike in front of Celine, slam it on the ground, hopped off of it, and tried to stab somebody, he screamed out ‘I’m like that, I’m like that, I’m like that,’” Clark said.
Investigators have not publicly confirmed what led up to the stabbing.
Channel 9 reached out to the Orlando Police Department to confirm the circumstances shown in the video but had not received a response.
It remains unclear whether investigators are considering self-defense in the case or whether the witness accounts could affect the charges Brown is facing.
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