A Honduran man charged with stabbing a teen girl at a Lowell baseball game appeared in court Friday to plead not guilty.
Dimas Yanes, 26, is charged with attempted murder, aggravated battery, two counts of battery and one count of intimidation.
He signed a no contact order that bars him from talking to the victim or her mother.
“I don’t even know who they are,” he said via a Spanish interpreter, adding later he didn’t have a phone.
His next court date is Nov. 8.
Police launched a manhunt in southern Lake County before capturing the 26-year-old man in a cornfield near Crown Point. They said it was a random attack.
The girl said she was in the bleachers at the Lowell VFW softball field on Aug. 31 watching the game behind home plate when a man — later identified as Yanes — “hovered,” then tried to stab her in the chest with a big knife.
She blocked him and was later taken to the hospital for cuts on her fingers. The man ran toward her mom, who dodged him. He sprinted away from the field.
The victim’s mom said she heard the girl scream, ran to her and the man turned tried to stab her.
A witness said the man came out of the woods and walked toward the field. He thought the girl’s sun umbrella she held blocked most of the knife’s blow and saved her life.
Yanes later told cops someone was “following him” out of the nearby woods and “telling him to do it,” an affidavit states.