James Wiedeman, a local Navy veteran, says he’s thankful to be alive after he was brutally attacked in his own home in the early hours of Thanksgiving morning.
It was on Thursday, November 24 that Lubbock Police were called to a residence near 41st and University Avenue around 2:30 a.m. Officers found 27-year-old Jimmy Nguyen dead, and 64-year-old Wiedeman badly injured with stab wounds and bite marks on his body, his left ear partially bitten off.
“I was just sitting in front of the TV and something came crashing through the window out back,” said Wiedeman describing the night of the attack. “He came through the room running at me, he’s naked, but with a knife in his hand and he kept shouting at me and screaming that he was going to kill me.”
The navy veteran says even tried reasoning with his attacker, who was armed with a knife.
“I kept saying ‘you don’t know me, there’s no reason to do this. We don’t have to do this, we can just stop.’ And every time I tried to stop, he would just stab me again.”
As Nguyen continued to advance on Wiedeman, he soon felt as though he had no choice but to fight back. After nearly half an hour of fighting, Wiedeman was able to gain control over Nguyen and turn his own knife against him until Nguyen stopped fighting back, killing Nguyen.
After the altercation, Wiedeman says he crawled to his neighbor’s home for help and call 9-1-1. Wiedeman says he did not know his attacker.
“I could not tell anything negative about him, just that he was young and healthy and awfully strong.”
Wiedeman says while he loves living in Lubbock, that he hopes to move out of his home soon, sharing that the memories and flashbacks of what happened in there are haunting.
“I couldn’t sleep last night, I haven’t been to sleep yet. I don’t feel nothing bad from him [Nguyen], it’s just the situation is very uncomfortable.”
One of Wiedeman’s neighbors, Sam Rodriguez, who Wiedeman met at the VA, says he was devastated to learn what had happened to his friend Thanksgiving morning.
“He’s a very good friend of mine. We do things together and I thought the worst,” said Rodriguez. “I didn’t get any sleep that night. I thought about him all day, the next day and finally he came home and I saw him and that gave me a little relief, but he’ still hurting.”
Nguyen was also a veteran, and had served in the Marines. Wiedeman believes he may have been suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.
“A lot of people don’t think it’s real, but it’s real and it can overtake your thinking and your mind and not leave you a clear path to go down,” said Wiedeman, who shares he too suffers from PTSD.
“As veterans to me we feel like brothers, and I’m actually a Vietnam war veteran. I saw a lot of action and stuff like this that happened, but it blew me away,” said Rodriguez.
Wiedeman was released from Covenant hospital the day after his attack.
Although he remains in a great deal of pain, he says he does not want the horrific experience to harden his heart.
“‘I don’t want any of the family members of this young man to feel negative toward me. I hold no animosity towards him or what happened.”
Lubbock Police have described the incident as a random home invasion.
The investigation remains ongoing.