CINCINNATI -- Doctors couldn’t agree on how many times Joe McLean was stabbed, his mother said Thursday night.
One told her five. Another said seven. Others went even higher: they counted 10 and 12 wounds on the man’s back and chest. Linda McLean spent more than 40 hours on the phone Wednesday and Thursday attempting to assess the real scale of the damage that had been done to her son while he lay sleeping in a friend’s apartment.
"I can’t go through this," she said through tears.
Joe McLean was staying with a friend on Elberon Avenue when, according to police, he was attacked early Wednesday morning by 55-year-old Daryl Hampton. Police arrested Hampton and charged him with felony assault for stabbing McClean several times in the torso.
Tony Purnell, a neighbor of McLean’s friend, answered a knock on his door after the stabbing and found McLean bleeding on his doorstep.
"The guy said, ‘Call 911. I’m bleeding out,'" Purnell said.
Neither Linda McLean nor Purnell knew what had transpired before the stabbing. Linda McLean said she could only hope her son would recover.
"This is my baby, you know," she said. "He’s always been my baby."
Hampton was being held in Hamilton County Jail Thursday night on a $50,000 bond.
