CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A Charlotte father is in jail after being accused of trying to kill his family with a knife and ax.
Neighbors woke up to his teenage son’s desperate attempt to find help.
Muruts Hailu is facing nearly a dozen charges stemming from the attack that unfolded overnight in a south Charlotte apartment complex.
Police say it happened on Wendover Road, right across from a busy shopping center early Monday morning.
Eyewitness News reporter Linzi Sheldon spoke with neighbors who woke up to the family’s screams for help and heard a thumping at their door to find a panicked boy in front of them.
“Frantic, he looked real frantic. Leaning up against the door, he was just leaning up against the door,” said neighbor Willie Swinton. “It seemed like he needed help bad, you know what I mean.”
Willie Swinton says he and his friends didn't know what to think when a boy started banging on his door just before 3:30 on Monday morning.
Swinton says he gave him his phone after the boy begged to use it.
“All I heard him on the phone was like, ‘I think he killed my mom, I think he killed my mom.’ ”
Police say 57-year-old Muruts Hailu attacked his wife and two teenage sons with a kitchen knife and an ax.
“All the police came and they put guns up,” said Swinton before they arrested Hailu.
Emergency crews rushed his 50-year-old wife to the hospital who survived the attack but with “severe lacerations,” according to police.
Hailu's two sons were also taken to the hospital, suffering from shock.
Neighbors at the apartment complex described the family as "quiet."
Trina Rivers calls this incident disturbing.
“It's just the fact that, you know, we have some type of violence so close... It's kind of eerie.”
Police haven't said what started the attack.