BAKERSFIELD, CA (KGET/CNN) – A Good Samaritan is recovering from multiple stab wounds after he stepped in to try and save a woman from a machete attack, allegedly executed by her ex-boyfriend.
Blaine Hodge, 27, was at Starbucks with a friend just before noon Sunday when a woman came running into the store.
"She was panicked. She was saying, 'Help me.' Then, at one point, she said, 'This guy's going to kill me,'" Hodge’s friend Joe Harris said.
When a man, later identified as 31-year-old Robert Rivas, entered the store after her, Harris said Hodge stepped in to stop Rivas, even though the suspect was carrying a machete.
"Everyone else was running away, and he was the first person to run straight to the action," Harris said of his friend. "He was like, 'I'm going to stop this guy regardless if I get stabbed or not."
Hodge was stabbed many times, suffering deep cuts to both hands and lacerations to his arms and knee. He needed close to 200 stitches when he was taken to the hospital, and he had to have surgery on his right hand, the fingers of which were left immobile.
The female victim was also stabbed. She remains in critical condition at the hospital.
Hodge’s girlfriend Tori Tony said she wasn't surprised her boyfriend did his best to help the victim.
"I believe it because it's him. I believe that he took a machete to the hands for someone else," Tony said. "He would do it again. He could lose an arm, and he would still do it again. And that's just Blaine."
A GoFundMe page was set up to help Hodge with his medical bills during what the website says will be a more than six-week recovery period.
Police determined the attack was an act of domestic violence, during which Rivas chased down his ex-girlfriend with the machete in broad daylight.
Rivas is charged with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and resisting arrest.
According to court records, Rivas was previously in trouble for domestic violence in 2014.
Copyright 2018 KGET via CNN. All rights reserved.
