By Mark LaFlamme,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Police followed a trail of blood around a downtown block Monday while investigating an early evening stabbing on Pierce Street.

Police said Michael Lagasse, 23, of Lewiston was stabbed during a scuffle on Pierce Street but that he then took off bleeding toward Birch and Blake streets.

Hours after the 7 p.m. attack, an Auburn police officer in pursuit of the suspect was involved in a two-car wreck on Main Street in that city. Neither driver was injured. Their identities were not immediately available.

Lagasse, who was stabbed in the arm and stomach, was taken to Central Maine Medical Center, where he underwent surgery.

Minutes after the 9:45 p.m. crash in Auburn, Lagasse awoke from surgery and announced he did not want to press charges against the man who had stabbed him, police said.

The search continued in both cities, nonetheless.

“The victim is not being completely cooperative right now,” said Lewiston police Lt. Tom Avery. “But we are still obligated to search for the suspect and to continue investigating.”

An investigation into the knifing was troublesome from the start, police said. After Lagasse was found on Birch Street, police followed the trail of blood back to Pierce Street, where it ended abruptly in front of an apartment building.

Several witnesses there described watching two men fight at the side the the street at about 7 p.m. Police then learned that the suspect in the stabbing lives in an apartment at 117 Pierce St.

“We did recover a knife at the apartment,” said Avery.

The knife was taken as evidence, but the suspect, a 35-year-old man, remained on the loose throughout the night as police searched for him across the downtown area.

At about 8:15 p.m., a police dispatcher reported a call from a man claiming to be the stabbing suspect. The man told the dispatcher he was calling from CMMC, where he was described as drunk, distraught from the fight and worried about the victim.

While officers prepared to check out that report, they were called instead to break up a fight in Kennedy Park. The brawl near the center of the park was said to have involved nearly four dozen people facing off in several individual fights.

Police forced their way into the crowd and, over a loudspeaker, announced that the park would be closed for the night. No serious injuries were reported in that scrap and no arrests were made.

At about 9:45 p.m., police in Auburn spotted a man fitting the description of the stabbing suspect near Bonney Park. When the man fled on foot, more officers were sent to the area. That’s when the police cruiser and a car being driven in the opposite direction collided in front of Florian’s Market, police said.

An Androscoggin County sheriff’s officer was sent to the crash scene to assist in an investigation, a common practice when a police cruiser is involved in a wreck. Auburn Deputy Police Chief Phil Crowell also went to the scene.

Lewiston and Auburn police scoured the area around Bonney Park and on the Lewiston side of the footbridge. However, by 11 p.m., the stabbing suspect had not been caught.

The night was pocked by violence and other mischief on both sides of the Androscoggin River. In Auburn, police were twice sent out to check out reports of gunfire. The first proved to be city officials frightening off birds near Lake Auburn.

Later, Auburn police were told that someone was firing a gun from a boat on the Androscoggin River. Game wardens went out in a boat of their own to investigate the possibility of night hunting.

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