In the early hours of Sunday, April 5, two stabbings took place in downtown Wilmington within a few minutes, just a block apart. One victim passed away from his injuries, and two others were sent to the hospital in serious condition.
The Wilmington Police Department (WPD) said the two incidents, despite their uncanny proximity, still appear completely unrelated.
Communication
WECT first reported on the incidents on Sunday afternoon, including the limited details police had offered at the time, but it wasn’t until Monday around noon that the Wilmington Police Department sent out a press release. On Tuesday evening, WPD released photos of a person of interest. That's prompted criticism and questions about the time it's taken to get information out to the press and the public.
Police Chief Ryan Zuidema said, “The challenge in any investigation, especially where there are concerns for the potential loss of life, is we want to make sure that we've notified — first and foremost — family members,” adding that some were not in the state.
Then, he said, there were other considerations, including that the chaotic nature of the incidents meant it was harder to get accurate information.
“There's also a bunch of investigative pieces that are going on at the same time. If we release too much information too early, that could certainly jeopardize the investigation. So it's balancing all those things with, obviously, the public's need to know and concern for any safety issues. So we try and balance those as best we can on any of these cases, and make sure that when we do put out the information, it's also as accurate as it can be,” he said.
In the time elapsed between the Sunday morning stabbings and the Monday press release, online speculation — and in some cases, conspiracy theories — ran rampant. A frequent claim was that city officials wanted information about the stabbings quashed to prevent any negative impact on the upcoming Azalea Festival.
Asked if WPD considered the festival in deciding how much information to put out and when, he said, “Absolutely, unequivocally, not.”
At the same time, Zuidema said WPD is prepared to staff the Azalea Festival, working with the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office.
Viral video of a fatal injury
Other concerns and criticisms followed the release of a video on social media, which appears to show one of the victims, 21-year-old Daniel Montano, a U.S. Marine, bleeding profusely from the neck. Another man takes off his t-shirt and apparently attempts to put pressure on the wound. Officers appear to be attempting to control a nearby altercation; one officer appears to use pepper spray. The officers don't appear to immediately provide first aid, although they do appear to make a radio call for help and, after donning gloves, come to his side as the video ends.
WHQR has confirmed the video was taken on Sunday morning, and law enforcement does not dispute its veracity. However, as Zuidema noted, it’s a chaotic scene and the video — which lasts just a few seconds — does not capture the entire sequence of events, beginning after Montano was injured and ending before EMS arrived at the scene.
“There were a lot of things that were going on there that are not captured in that video,” Zuidema said. “The video is, in essence, a two-dimensional depiction of a three-dimensional incident.”
Zuidema noted several elements of the chaotic situation, including some heavily intoxicated, a fight taking place in the middle of North Front Street, an officer exposed to pepper spray during the melee, and a second injured man who was, at one point, running — leaving officers initially unsure if he was a victim or suspect before they physically caught up with him and then helped apply a torniquet to stem his bleeding. There was also a growing crowd of people, many of them intoxicated, including one man who sat in the street, arguing with officers and refusing to move, obstructing the path of an ambulance.
He also noted that WPD officers called for gloves before getting close to the victim because the department’s “standard protocol is for our officers when they're dealing with any type of individual who is bleeding is to try and put personal protective equipment on first whenever they can to protect themselves. The hands are usually one of the most frequent areas that a blood-borne pathogen can get into someone's system.”
Zuidema noted the video shows officers calling for help, and beginning to direct the ambulance to the scene, adding that, “What the video doesn't show then is the next several minutes of the officers trying to treat that individual until the EMS arrived.”
He said officers did the best they could to save Montano’s life, and didn’t suggest they could have done anything differently.
“It's certainly easy to Monday morning quarterback. without question. But that video depicts a very small portion of a much larger incident. And again, our officers, I think, did the best they could in that chaotic situation to save that man's life. And unfortunately, he passed, and certainly our condolences stay with his family and friends."
"We are outnumbered"
Some comments about the video, and the incidents in general, have been less critical of officers, asking instead about staffing levels.
Asked if officers were simply overwhelmed, Zuidema said, “Anytime we're in a downtown area, we are outnumbered, right? On a Friday or Saturday night, we had probably about every police resource in the city that was not tied up on another call down there, right? And that's also with assistance from New Hanover County Sheriff's Office that we partner with several task forces, including the downtown task force that they provide staffing for.”
Zuidema said WPD has to balance coverage for the half-square-mile of downtown with the over 50 square miles of the rest of the city, given the resources they have.
“We’re trying to balance the needs of an entire city,” he said. “Is there always a need for more resources? Absolutely. If we were fully staffed, which we're not, right now, there would certainly be more officers to allocate to the downtown area as well as other areas in the city. So what we try and do is manage the limited resources that we have.”
While Zuidema was clear that WPD could use more resources, he also said that more cops downtown might not have prevented this particular incident.
“The officers, I mean, they were literally in that block when that happened, right? Because I think some of what you hear from some people in the community is, well, ‘we need more officers down there,’ right? The reality is, in that situation, we had a bunch of officers down there in the same block where this happened, and if somebody is trying to harm someone else, they obviously weren't really concerned about the fact that there were police officers nearby,” he said.
Zuidema has said elsewhere that violent crime numbers are up this year compared to 2025. Surges in violence can be overdetermined, with more than one driving factor, but many suggest that a more robust police presence could help deter similar events. If that's the route Wilmington goes, it will need to work on recruiting and retaining officers, as the department is currently understaffed, and competing against other agencies with comparable or better pay and benefits.
Support for officers
Zuidema said the weekend’s events are an example of the need to support officers, saying that pay raises proposed by City Manager Becky Hawke are “very bluntly, long overdue,” and would help “first and foremost” with retaining existing staff.
“We want to make sure that they're compensated fairly. You know, we ask a lot of our officers here. We truly do. And you know, this weekend's a prime example of that,” he said. “Because when that call was over, those officers didn't go and put their feet up on a couch somewhere right as soon as they cleared that call. They went and handled a bunch of other calls that were probably in holding because of that incident, and had to put that all behind them and then go deal with the neighborhood dispute, or the woman who maybe was a victim of domestic violence, or the whatever the next call was.”
WPD asks for help in fatal stabbing
On Tuesday evening, WPD announced it had made an arrest in the second stabbing from Sunday morning, which had sent one young woman to the hospital with life-threatening injuries.
The stabbing that ultimately killed Montano and injured an unnamed second man is still under investigation. WPD has released images of a person of interest — though not currently a named suspect — and is soliciting any information through a secure online portal, which you can find here.
