Police arrested UCSD student Peter Butcher, 21, on Saturday, April 6 in San Diego. They allege that he stabbed three people with a syringe, injecting them with a tranquilizing drug.
Butcher faces charges of assault with a deadly weapon and remains in jail on a bail of $250,000.
According to the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department, who issued a warrant for his arrest, Butcher is under investigation for three separate syringe attacks. Two of the attacks occurred along Santa Barbara beaches, where Butcher makes his permanent residence, on Jan. 11 as well as last Friday, April 5. The other attack he is being linked with occurred on Jan. 20 in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., coinciding with a snowboard competition at which he is known to have competed as a member of the UCSD snowboard team.
Investigators in the case said they believe that Butcher took pleasure in watching the victims lose consciousness; they note that none of the known victims were sexually assaulted.
“”People do different things for different reasons,”” Lt. Bill Byrne of the Santa Barbara sheriff’s office told the Santa Barbara News-Press. “”We believe that he enjoyed watching his victims after they began to go into their panic-like state.””
In Friday’s attack, Santa Barbara police say, a 20-year-old female was jogging along an Isla Vista beach when she was stabbed with a syringe containing a drug that caused her to lay unconscious for over three hours. She was discovered when a man walking a dog heard the victim cry for help from the ground.
On Jan. 11, a 63-year-old female was stabbed when a male of a similar description approached the woman and asked her a question, according to police. The woman bent down to retrieve her watch, which had fallen when the assailant stabbed her in the buttocks with a syringe.
Nine days later, a female was skiing at Mammoth Mountain ski resort when she was knocked down from behind by a male snowboarder who landed on top of her. Police say the man then injected the woman with a tranquilizer that kept her unconscious on a hospital ventilator for five hours.
Byrne also said that police believe that Butcher intentionally committed the attacks in remote areas so that he could watch his victims become unconscious.
