A stabbing at Wildwood Lake Bathing Beach Park in Northampton on Sunday, June 26, led to the arrest, announced by Southampton Town Police on Thursday, June 30, of Julio Cruz, 41, of Riverhead. He’s charged with felony counts of first-degree assault and third-degree criminal possession of a weapon.
Police reported arriving on the scene of the stabbing just before 6:30 p.m. in response to a call about someone being stabbed multiple times in the stomach, hands and arms. The assailant was not on the scene when police got there. Cruz turned himself in on June 30.
An argument with the victim, a 21-year-old man, led to the assault, police said, declining to offer any further details about the victim other than to say he or she sustained serious injuries.
First-degree assault is a class B felony. It can be charged, according the New York State Penal Law, when the assailant causes serious physical injury with a dangerous weapon or “with intent to disfigure another person seriously and permanently, or to destroy, amputate or disable permanently a member or organ of his body, or causes such injury to such person or to a third person,” or “Under circumstances evincing a depraved indifference to human life, the assailant recklessly engages in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to another person, and thereby causes serious physical injury to another person.”
A violent felony, first-degree assault carries a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 5 years for a first offender and a maximum sentence of up to 25 years.
Cruz was released on $2,500 bail following arraignment in Southampton Town Justice Court on the day of his arrest.
