On Dec. 13, a young man was taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle after sustaining multiple, life-threatening stab wounds in a late-morning confrontation with another man in south Auburn.

Now, the guy with all those stab wounds is on the mend, but he adamantly refuses to talk to police, and his determined lack of cooperation has led the King County Prosecutor to decline to move forward with the case at this time.

“He’s been awful, just awful,” Auburn Police Cmdr. Steve Stocker said Monday afternoon of the stabbing victim. “We can’t talk to him without him calling the detective names. The suspect has been cooperative – he may not be telling the truth, but he’s been cooperative. Potentially, it’s a self-defense thing. That’s where we’re at.”

Auburn Police responded at 10:04 a.m. to a call from the AutoZone in the 4300 block of A Street Southeast, where employees said a man pounding on the business’ back door told them he had been stabbed. When officers talked to the victim, he confirmed he had been stabbed numerous times, and paramedics transported him to Harborview with life-threatening injuries. The man is between 18 and 25 years old.

Stocker said the stabbing happened in the victim’s limousine.

A suspect was seen leaving the area of the assault on foot. Having set up a perimeter, with multiple officers in the area, and after deploying a K9 tracker, at about 11:37 a.m., police caught the man they believed to be the assailant, hiding in some bushes at an apartment complex in the area.

At the request of police, the Auburn School District placed Ilalko, Gildo Rey and Lakeland elementary schools, Mt. Baker Middle School, and Auburn Riverside High School on lockdown for about an hour and a half before lifting the lockdown, according to Vicki Alonzo. the district’s information officer.