Story Photos
 Photo by Bill Wagner AMR ambulance workers wheel out Vision City Barber Shop owner Keith Chuinard to an ambulance after he was stabbed in his shop on Hudson Street in downtown Longview early Wednesday afternoon. |
Barber stabbed in shop
Thursday, July 15, 2004 7:13 AM PDT
By Sally Ousley and M.L. Madison
Printable version
E-mail this articleBefore one of his former shoeshine boys attacked him with a screwdriver Wednesday, Longview barber Keith Chuinard thought the man was acting strangely.
Luther "Luke" Moore, 31, came by Vision City Barber Shop at 1311 Hudson St. shortly after noon and asked Chuinard, the owner and his former employer, to play chess.
"I thought nothing of it -- he came around to visit once in awhile," said Chuinard, 70, who said he taught Moore to play the game.
Chuinard noticed that Moore, whom he described as "smart" and "good at" chess, wasn't playing well.
He said Moore got up to use the bathroom twice. After returning the second time, Moore attacked Chuinard, who had his back turned, with Chuinard's own Philips screwdriver, Chuinard said. He said he was stabbed several times in the arm and back.
By 3:30 p.m., Chuinard, who was taken to St. John Medical Center and treated, was back at work. Moore was in custody after police tracked him down at a nearby apartment building.
"He attacked me, I think, with the intent to kill," Chuinard told a Daily News reporter later in the evening. "I didn't know he had punctured me. I grabbed his wrist and slammed him up against the wall. Then I tripped and I was on my back, and I kept kicking him, fighting him off. I got up, and I got a gun out of the drawer here" behind a barber's chair, he said.
Chuinard said Moore ran out of the shop when he saw the gun, a .38 caliber handgun. During the struggle, he said he asked Moore why he was attacking him.
"The first time, he said, 'I'm just trying to give you the screwdriver,' " he recalled. "And later I asked him again, 'Luke, why are you doing this?' And he said, 'I need money really bad.' "
Chuinard said he thought Moore was on drugs. He said he hadn't seen him in a few months, and Longview police confirmed that Moore has just been released from jail Wednesday.
After Moore fled the shop, several people chased him to the area around Bob's Merchandise. Police found him hiding near an apartment complex.
Witnesses saw Chuinard struggling an assailant. One witness, who asked to not to be identified, said he was walking in the alley between the barber shop and the Longview Police Department when he heard two young women yelling for police.
He said a short, stocky man came around the corner into the alley behind the women. A police officer opened a door into the alley, and one of the woman said a man had just been shot or stabbed.
An older man, who the witness assumed to be the barber, walked into the alley with a gun, pointed and told the officer, " 'That guy stabbed me.' According to the witness, the officer told the man to drop the gun and then pursued the suspected assailant.
Vision City Barber Shop has been operating at the Hudson Street location since 1924. Chuinard, a fourth-generation resident of Cowlitz County, is the third owner of the shop, which he bought in 1987.
Joe Zuniga, who gets his hair cut once a month at the shop, was shocked when he saw it Wednesday afternoon.
"I've had my hair cut from him for the last five years," said the 74-year-old Zuniga. "He's an old-timer, and I like the way they cut hair."
Moore is being held in the Cowlitz County Jail on first-degree attempted robbery and second-degree assault, with preliminary bail set at $75,000.
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