Eight months ago, Kentrell Freeman was arrested for bringing a baseball bat to his ex-girlfriend’s office and threatening to kill her, despite a domestic violence protective order barring him from the woman’s workplace. A coworker was able to lock the office door before Freeman entered with the bat, court documents state.
Two days ago, on Wednesday, May 28, Freeman returned to the woman’s workplace, this time with a knife. He stabbed his ex-girlfriend in the abdomen, and when the same coworker — Joe Clements — again intervened to protect her, Freeman stabbed him twice in the back, according to Key West police reports.
The protective order keeping Freeman away from the victim had expired on March 21, according to court records.
The stabbing occurred at the offices of Gary the Carpenter Construction, 800 Simonton St., shortly after 3 p.m. on Wednesday, May 28, police reports state. The female victim, Alexandra Nicole Albury, 36, who shares a son with Freeman, is the company’s office manager, and Clements, 65, handles its computer system.
Witnesses in a neighboring business told police they saw Freeman walking up Petronia Street towards the construction company’s office at the corner of Petronia and Simonton streets.
“According to witnesses … an ex-boyfriend of Victim Albury, later identified as Kentrell Freeman (defendant) came into the office and started a verbal altercation with Victim Albury. The argument became physical, and the defendant stabbed Albury in the abdomen with a knife. Victim Clements intervened in the altercation, and he was stabbed twice in the back,” Officer Scott Standerwick wrote in his report.
When Standerwick arrived on the scene, he wrote in a report, witnesses were applying pressure to Clements’s wounds and Albury was applying pressure to her abdomen wound. Albury was flown to a Miami hospital for treatment while Clements was treated at Lower Keys Medical Center, then released.
Albury’s sister posted on social media the morning after the stabbing, that Nicole was “stable and doing well.” She thanked the community for their concern and support. Gary Burchfield, who owns Gary the Carpenter Construction, posted a tribute to Clements on social media immediaetly following his release from the hospital, writing, “Not all heroes wear capes; some wear ugly pants. But this dude Joe Clements is one today, and I’m proud to call him brother.”
Freeman, however, had fled the area after the stabbing, prompting an overnight manhunt that ended with his arrest in a backyard at Poinciana Plaza housing complex off Duck Avenue around 7:30 a.m. the next morning, on Thursday, May 29.
He faces charges of attempted second-degree murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, police reports state. He is in jail and being held on a $2.5 millon bond.
Freeman is still awaiting trial for his September 2024 arrest involving the baseball bat. He faces charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and violation of a protective order in that case, and has a hearing scheduled for June 16 in front of Judge Mark Jones, according to court records. Following that arrest, Freeman reportedly told police that Albury had angered him by deactivating his cell phone service and telling him she was “going to make his life hell,” reports state.
Freeman denied threatening to kill Albury with the bat and told police he had brought the bat to Albury’s workplace to drop it off for their son, although he admitted knowing he was prohibited from that property by the protective order.
