It wasn’t the imagined bayonet of cool steel piercing skin and muscle. It was blunt. A hard fist to the side.
She didn’t even realize she had been stabbed until she felt the warm blood flow from the slice on her left side. Then she hit the ground.
More than a week ago, Kayla Delaplane and Brandon Haiflich were stabbed on Bloomington’s west side while trying to help a woman escape an attack.
It was at about 6:15 p.m. Oct. 15, a cool Wednesday, and the couple of three years was worried about traffic. Haiflich had an exam in his Business Analytics class, part of his accounting degree, and the drive to campus was 15 minutes.
They were snacking on mozzarella sticks, a precursor to the Italian-inspired meal planned to celebrate Haiflich’s 20th birthday that night.
Haiflich popped the lid on the trashcan in their apartment to dump the paper plates, and then they heard the screams.
“We weren’t quite sure what it was,” Haiflich said. “We knew it was screaming, but we weren’t sure who or where.”
They hustled to their second floor balcony. Across the parking lot, in front of the complex’s mailboxes, a man pinned a woman to the ground.
“That’s not OK,” said Delaplane, 20. “She needs help.”
They called it instinct and second nature. They said nothing, raced out the door and down the steps, not even bothering with shoes.
“Get off of her!” Delaplane screamed over and over.
As they got closer, Delaplane said the man had the woman’s throat in his hands. His knees bore into her arms.
Delaplane stopped about 10 feet away, still screaming. Haiflich was close behind.
Then the man lunged.
A knife appeared in the man’s hand.
“Oh my god!” Delaplane shouted.
His face was unforgettable, she said, not crazed or darting, but focused.
She began to back up, but he was too fast. The blade tore through her new sweater and found a patch of skin above her left hip.
“After he hit me with it, there was nothing, no pain,” Delaplane said. “I didn’t feel a blade. I didn’t feel anything.”
Seconds later, she hit the ground.
With the two women on the ground, the man turned on Haiflich.
He tried to plead with the approaching man, “You don’t have to do this. You can stop.”
The man kept coming, so Haiflich turned and ran. The man came from behind and in an arcing motion swung the knife into Haiflich’s rib cage.
Haiflich said he is fuzzy about what happened next, but he knows the attacker dropped the knife and hit him in the back before turning to go back to the women.
While the man was distracted with Haiflich, Delaplane crawled to the other woman, who did not want to be named, and the two ran to the nearest ?apartment.
“Luckily someone opened their door and ushered us in,” Delaplane said.
The attacker escaped on his bike.
Delaplane and Haiflich were taken to Bloomington Hospital , where Haiflich underwent surgery. Doctors were worried about his liver and arteries.
He suffered a collapsed lung. Delaplane suffered the wound in her left side and a cut on her arm. The couple said the other woman was bruised and had a cut on her throat.
Delaplane was released Thursday and Haiflich on Saturday. He got his birthday meal — chicken alfredo and cake — Sunday night.
He walks with a black cane and a visible hunch. His hand covers his torso in a perpetual pardon. Delaplane calls him “Crip.”
“I’m glad that we were here to help,” Delaplane said. “We were questioning whether we would do it again or not.”
They found out Sunday night when, once again, screams rose from the parking lot.
The couple and Haiflich’s mom were in the apartment. All three raced outside.
They saw the parents of the screaming boy arrive quickly to his side, and all was quiet again.
An arrest was made the day after the stabbing, according to an IDS report published Oct. 16. The man was identified as a possible suspect in the case on charges not related to the stabbing, and a name was not released at that time.
Monroe County Sheriffs Department did not return multiple phone calls last week for an update on the case.
