APPLE VALLEY, Minn. (WCCO) — A Twin Cities man needs surgery after he was brutally attacked while trying to help his neighbor.
“I know he was mad. He’s not a big man. I’m a big man, and he wasn’t afraid to come after me,” said Bruce Pagel about that November night in his neighborhood. There are a lot of disturbing images he’ll remember, but only one will always stick out in his mind.
“If I say I got to help her, I got to help her from being tortured any more than what was going on,” he said. “What she went through prior to me coming there, I couldn’t stop that. But what could have happened, I don’t know.”
He found his female neighbor up the street with a shovel in her hands, hiding behind her shed. She had allegedly run from her husband, Cirilo Arteaga, who hit her during a fight. Her mouth was bleeding and her shoulder was injured.
“I knew there was something wrong, because it didn’t make sense,” he said.
Pagel was at home when he first heard a car alarm go on and off several times in his Apple Valley neighborhood. When he investigated, he found Arteaga’s wife.
“She was shaking and crying, and all I had time to say was, ‘are you OK?’ And I saw her look at the front door of her house, and I turned around, and I saw him come out, and he had just a pair of jeans on,” Pagel said. “And he was at a dead run at me with a knife in his hands.”
He ran, but Arteaga caught up to him. He allegedly stabbed Pagel in his left hand and punched him several times. The stab wound was bad enough that it severed a tendon. Pagel’s bicep is torn, and he says the pain is severe.
“I’ve had so many emails that I’m a hero. I’m no way a hero. I’m just someone who helped another person who needed help,” Pagel said.
Arteaga faces assault charges for hitting his wife and stabbing Pagel.
Doctors told Pagel that he has to have that surgery in the next week or the damage to his tendon will be permanent. The problem is that Bruce doesn’t have health insurance, and he’s not sure how he’ll pay for the estimated $5,000 surgery bill. His friends set up a fund for him.
Beaten and bruised, Pagel said he would step in again no matter the cost.
To donate to Pagel’s fund, head to any M&I Bank location and ask for the Benefit for Bruce Pagel Fund.
