By Mark LaFlamme,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Police on Wednesday arrested a Lewiston man and charged him with the Tuesday-night stabbing of a teenager on Johnson Hill Road in Poland.

Ricky Saucier, 19, whose last known address was Oxford Street in Lewiston, was arrested on a charge of elevated aggravated assault when Lewiston police and Androscoggin County Sheriff’s investigators stormed a home at 55 Howe St.

Saucier was taken to Central Maine Medical Center with a wound police said he inflicted on himself while stabbing a 16-year-old boy in the throat at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.

The victim of the attack, who has not been identified, was released from CMMC on Tuesday afternoon after undergoing surgery for the knife wound to his throat. Police said the teen will likely require follow-up treatments for the wound.

“It was worse than it looked at first,” said sheriff’s deputy Tom Slivinski.

For most of the day Wednesday, Slivinski and Lewiston police Officer Ryan Guay worked on leads they developed pointing to Saucier as the suspect in the knifing.

At 4 p.m., the officers went to an apartment at 44 Bartlett St., where they found a Ford Escort believed to be linked to the stabbing. Police said blood was discovered inside the car that was believed to belong to Saucier after he cut himself while stabbing the 16-year-old with a butterfly knife.

Police impounded the car and began looking for a local man who was believed to have been driving it when Saucier confronted his victim from the passenger seat Tuesday night.

Slivinski said the 16-year-old victim was walking toward a store with a friend Tuesday when a pair of older men drove past and yelled out the window. Moments later, the car stopped and the suspect got out of the vehicle to confront the teenagers, police said.

The victim had one arm in a sling from an earlier injury to his collarbone when he was stabbed, police said. Slivinski said the victim did not provoke the attack, and it was unknown why Saucier allegedly stabbed him.

“This was a cowardly act,” Slivinski said. “The victim was completely defenseless.”

At about 5 p.m. Wednesday, Slivinski and Guay went to a trailer park off Washington Street in Auburn in search of the driver of the Ford Escort. The man was not found there, but the officers located him in a different location a short time later, police said. The driver was not arrested.

With new information about the stabbing suspect, a half-dozen Lewiston police officers and sheriff’s Detective William Gagne went to 55 Howe St. in search of Saucier. He was found inside an apartment there and arrested at about 9 p.m.

“One of our officers obtained information about the suspect, and we immediately passed that on to the deputy working on the case,” said Lewiston police Lt. Tom Avery. “We’ve been assisting that department, and we will continue to assist them.”

The suspect was being examined at CMMC later Wednesday night. He was expected to be taken to the Androscoggin County Jail in Auburn once released from the hospital. Police expect Saucier to be held on $25,000 cash bail.

A butterfly knife, the weapon police say was used in the stabbing, is a blade concealed within grooves of side-by-side handles. In the hands of a trained user, the blade can be brought forth quickly with a flipping motion of one hand.

The charge of elevated aggravated assault is typically reserved for those accused of intentionally injuring another person with a dangerous weapon and with “depraved indifference to the value of human life.”