Jackson Teen Opens Door to Stranger & Gets Stabbed by ‘Skinny’ Man

Photo by The Augusta Press

Date: September 29, 2021

A Jackson teen was recovering Wednesday afternoon following surgery for a stabbing that happened when she opened her door to a stranger.

The 17-year-old girl told authorities that the suspect was skinny. “When she said skinny, she meant meth head skinny,” mother Jessica Nicole Virella said. “He was on edge and super skinny.”

Virella said her daughter is a USC Aiken student who was at home recovering from a fall down the stairs at school. She was asleep around 6:30 a.m. Wednesday when someone knocked at the door of her home on Cassel Street. The teen thought it was her mother returning from work.

Instead, it was a skinny man with a surgical mask, food-service gloves and cheap sunglasses. His whole face was covered, but the daughter said she thinks he was white because one of his dark socks had a hole in it. “She saw his toe was white,” Virella said.

The man asked “Where is he?”

Virella says she is in the middle of a custody battle, and she is not sure if the stabbing has something to do with that, or whether it was a random attack. 

After the man realized the teen was not helpful, he stabbed her in the side and fled. She then called 911 and texted her mom.

The teen underwent exploratory surgery and was resting Wednesday afternoon, her mother said. Luckily, the suspect didn’t mess up anything internally, she said. 

The Aiken County Sheriff’s Office is assisting Jackson Police in investigating the stabbing. Several units, including K9s, surrounded the mobile home during a search for the alleged attacker.

If you have any information that can help, please call the ACSO at 803-648-6811.

Greg Rickabaugh is the Jail Report Contributor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at greg.rickabaugh@theaugustapress.com.


[adrotate banner=”25″]

What to Read Next

The Author

Greg Rickabaugh is an award-winning crime reporter in the Augusta-Aiken area with experience writing for The Augusta Chronicle and serving as publisher of The Jail Report. He also owns AugustaCrime.com. Rickabaugh is a 1994 graduate of the University of South Carolina and has appeared on several crime documentaries on the Investigation Discovery channel. He is married with two daughters.

Comment Policy

The Augusta Press encourages and welcomes reader comments; however, we request this be done in a respectful manner, and we retain the discretion to determine which comments violate our comment policy. We also reserve the right to hide, remove and/or not allow your comments to be posted.

The types of comments not allowed on our site include:

  • Threats of harm or violence
  • Profanity, obscenity, or vulgarity, including images of or links to such material
  • Racist comments
  • Victim shaming and/or blaming
  • Name calling and/or personal attacks;
  • Comments whose main purpose are to sell a product or promote commercial websites or services;
  • Comments that infringe on copyrights;
  • Spam comments, such as the same comment posted repeatedly on a profile.