AUBURN – An unpaid debt may have triggered a fatal stabbing last week, police said.

Karie Lessard said she was in a Bartlett Street apartment with her parents when she heard a man saying on the phone that her brother, Dustin, owed the man $250. Karie Lessard’s father, Richard, tried calling Dustin, according to a police affidavit released Monday.

The male caller said: “They ain’t got the money, bring up the guns,” Karie Lessard told police.

She fled the apartment, then later went back. When she re-entered, she saw her father had been stabbed, the affidavit states.

Police went to the scene of the stabbing. One of the responding officers noticed a man at a nearby intersection, Ash and Howe streets, who matched a description given police by witnesses and radioed by dispatchers.

The officer noticed that the man, Sergio Hairston, 18, of Lewiston had blood on his face and clothes. He searched Hairston and found a knife and towel, both stained with blood.

Hairston was taken into police custody and charged with murder. He is being held without bail pending a Friday bail hearing in Androscoggin County Superior Court.

Richard Lessard, 52, of Lewiston told his daughter he had been stabbed and was dying. Police said they saw several pools of blood in the kitchen and living room at the apartment.

Lessard was taken by ambulance to Central Maine Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.