A Grand Forks man arrested Tuesday after reportedly breaking into the apartment where two people were stabbed Monday will be charged with two counts of attempted murder, police say.
Grand Forks Police believe Jordan Michael Parisien, 29, is responsible for stabbing a man and a woman in an apartment at 4265 Fifth Ave. N., part of a cluster of apartments west of the UND campus, at about 10 a.m. Monday.
The suspect evaded police Monday, but officers were called back to the same apartment complex Tuesday morning by a resident who said a suspicious person was seen entering the apartment where the stabbing occurred. A probable cause summary of the Tuesday break-in includes statements from a witness who saw Parisien climb up to the balcony of the second-floor apartment where the stabbings occurred. The witness reported watching Parisien “cover his hands with his long-sleeve shirt and start wiping the balcony and the sliding glass door” before entering the apartment. After a few minutes, Parisien left the apartment and scaled the side of the building once more to reach the next balcony and enter the apartment directly above the one in which the stabbings occurred.
The resident of that third-floor unit was in the apartment at the time and was familiar with Parisien, but told police that he or she had not given him permission to enter the residence. According to the police summary, Parisien later admitted to officers that he had been in the third-floor apartment and had asked the resident there for money. The victims of Monday’s double-stabbing, the motives for which are still unclear, have told police that they do not know Parisien.
Shortly after he was reported breaking into the apartment Tuesday, Parisian was located by police a few blocks away, near the intersection of Sixth Avenue North and Harvard Street. Noting a similarity to a description of the suspect in the stabbings, they detained him, booked him on suspicion of burglary and named him as a person of interest in the earlier attack.
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Investigators now say they have found evidence linking Parisien to the stabbings. They have recommended charges to the Grand Forks County state’s attorney including: two counts of attempted murder, two counts of aggravated assault, two counts of burglary and one count of criminal trespass.
Formal charges for the stabbings had not been filed against Parisien as of Wednesday evening.
He pleaded guilty to theft of property in Grand Forks in November 2015 and was sentenced to one year in jail with 275 days suspended, court records show. He also pleaded guilty to felony conspiracy to commit theft at that time and was sentenced to two years in prison with all but two months suspended.
He also has a criminal record in Polk County, where he was convicted of domestic assault by strangulation and was sentenced to 18 months in prison in March 2016. An information officer from the Minnesota Department of Corrections said Parisien was put on supervised release in February from a prison in Faribault, Minn. His sentence expired Aug. 23.
