Monroe County prosecutors said on Oct. 2 they will charge a 17-year-old from Key West as an adult, a day after police arrested the teen on a charge of attempted first-degree murder in connection with a stabbing outside the Regal Cinema.
Marc Louissaint, a student at Key West High School, had a steak knife in each hand when he attacked another 17-year-old outside the movie theater, 3338 N. Roosevelt Blvd., at about 1:20 a.m. Oct. 1, according to Joseph Mansfield, the Chief Assistant State Attorney in Monroe County.
The teen, who suffered stab wounds to his shoulder, abdomen and one side of his chest, was in stable condition Monday in a Miami-Dade hospital’s intensive care unit, Mansfield said, while Louissaint remained in juvenile detention.
Louissaint was not listed in the sheriff’s online jail records on Oct. 2 and it was unclear whether he had legal representation.
Police called the stabbing a premeditated attack designed to kill the teen.
“The stabbing would have resulted in the death of (the victim) except that he failed to do so,” according to Louissaint’s Monroe County juvenile arrest report.
The two teens worked at the movie theater, Mansfield told Keys Weekly on Monday.
The victim had borrowed Louissaint’s AirPods, the Apple brand wireless earbuds, and said he would return them to him on Sept. 30 when they both were scheduled to work, Mansfield said.
That day, when the teen arrived at the theater at about 6 p.m., Louissaint “aggressively confronted” him after learning he had forgotten to bring the AirPods to work, the arrest report states.
“The victim told the suspect, ‘I don’t have them today, I’ll bring them tomorrow,’” Mansfield said. “The suspect left work. The victim was still at work.”
Louissaint left the theater and went home, but later returned to the Regal’s parking lot, Mansfield said.
“He picked up the knives from his house and went back to the movie theater with the intent to confront this kid,” Mansfield told Keys Weekly on Monday.
Louissaint showed up at the Regal with the knives stashed inside a crossbody “fanny pack,” he was wearing, according to a Monroe County juvenile arrest form, and found the victim standing in the parking lot. The two squared off as if they were about to have a fistfight, witnesses told police.
But then Louissaint brandished the knives, holding one in each hand, and began scraping the blades together “like a Hibachi chef sharpening” knives, Mansfield said.
The victim took off running but tripped on the sidewalk and fell to the ground. Louissaint, who had been chasing him, “pounced on top of (the victim) and began stabbing him,” police said a witness told them.
“He’s just pummeling him with stab wounds,” Mansfield said. “He’s got a knife in both hands puncturing him left and right.”
Key West police were called to the Regal after a 911 call that someone had been stabbed and was “bleeding out,” was made at 1:26 a.m. Oct. 1. But before police got to the theater, the wounded teen had already been taken to Lower Keys Medical Center by his friends, said police spokeswoman Alyson Crean.
Shortly after he arrived at the hospital, the victim was airlifted by Trauma Star to the HCA Florida Kendall Hospital, Crean said.
Meanwhile, outside the Regal, police found “a small puddle of blood in the parking lot and two steak knives were located nearby,” Crean said.
Police also found Louissaint, who had remained at the scene of the crime, and immediately detained him.
Detectives worked on three separate crime scenes at the site and obtained several search warrants before arresting Louissaint, Crean said.
Police took a DNA sample from Louissaint using a buccal swab, which collects DNA cells from inside a person’s cheek. They also searched his home and found steak knives in a kitchen drawer that matched those used in the attack, the arrest report states.
