Captain Tim Splain of the Asheville Police Department briefs the media on events on Haywood Road Photo by Bill Rhodes
APRIL 5 UPDATE: Early this morning, the Asheville Police Department charged Stevie Gene Davis, 52, of Candler with first-degree murder in an incident that occurred shortly after 9 p.m., April 4, on Haywood Road in West Asheville at or near a local bar, Mike’s Side Pocket. Also charged with aiding and abetting first-degree murder was Richard Kevin Anderson, 25, of Asheville. [See the APD press release here.]
Police say Steven Atwell Wike was the man who came into the bar and assaulted patrons with a knife, leaving Harold McHone dead and stabbing Kevin Warren, who, as of the morning of April 5, is in critical condition. Wike also stabbed and killed Phillip Davis, brother to Stevie. Anderson and Stevie Davis then apparently chased Wike down the street, killing him near a city bus a block east. Anderson was recently listed on WWNC’s Mountain’s Most Wanted.
APRIL 4: According to various witnesses, earlier on Wednesday, April 4, a man (later identified as Wilke) had been asked to leave the bar because he was drunk. He returned to Mike’s Side Pocket that same evening and attacked people in the bar with a knife. Early reports indicated that one, possibly two, people were critically injured inside the bar. Another person, also seriously injured, ran from the bar and collapsed in the parking lot of BJ’s gas station/convenience store across the street. Witnesses from a restaurant across the street — The Admiral — say that person was seriously injured and swiftly removed by paramedics from Asheville Fire and Rescue.
Meanwhile, the knife-wielding man fled the bar and attempted to get on a city bus about a block east. The bus driver did not let him board. According to some witnesses, other people from the bar chased the stabber down to the bus and either beat him with baseball bats or stabbed him. He was taken to the hospital as well, with serious wounds.
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Bloody hand prints cover a city bus down the block from a multiple stabbing inside a Haywood Road Bar. Some witnesses say Wike, the perpetrator of the initial attack indoors, became a victim of a mob as he tried to get on this city bus to escape. Photo by Bill Rhodes |
The first media briefing on the situation by Captain Tim Splain was understandably short on detail. “We cannot confirm the status of injured individuals right now,” said Splain. Asked if the original perpetrator had become a victim, Splain did not comment, nor did he answer when asked if one of the victims was the initial perpetrator.
“The investigation, as you can see, is continuing. I anticipate a briefing by Sargent Welborn will happen in the morning,” said Splain.
As of 1 a.m., Haywood Road was still closed from Michigan Avenue to Swannona Avenue. The APD set up large lights and generators on scene. Some people have not been allowed to move cars from the crime scene and have been given various times by police when they could reclaim vehicles. A supervisor for Asheville Transit was waiting for police to allow her to retrieve the video from the bus inside the crime scene, as it may reveal further details about the incident.
At the time of this post, the police were still interviewing up to 30 witnesses in various locations.
Video provided by Jonathan Poston from April 4
Might want to update this report, as the AC-T reports that three people were killed, not just “critically wounded.”
this was a poorly written article. after reading it i didn’t really know who the murder was. and as mentioned above, the three were killed, not “critically wounded”
In early reports on the scene, and at 1 a.m., when this report went online, it wasn’t at first clear that one of the dead was the initial attacker, nor was it certain how many had succumbed to their wounds. According to the APD report Ч which wasn’t released until approximately 11 a.m. today, April 5 Ч only one man died at the scene.