Inset left: Jonathan Blake Chaney (WAFF/YouTube). Inset right: Nicolas Trombetta (Marshall County Sheriff's Office). Background: The apartment complex in Albertville, Alabama, where the attack occurred (WAFF/YouTube).
A man in Alabama letting another man stay at his apartment for a few days was cooking steaks and watching TV with him when suddenly his throat was slit and he was stabbed in the back by the visitor, authorities say.
Nicolas Trombetta, 25, is charged with attempted murder, according to jail records from the Marshall County Sheriff's Office.
Jonathan Blake Chaney, 30, identified himself to Huntsville-based NBC affiliate WAFF as the victim. He also shared his harrowing account of what happened that fateful day.
On June 12, Chaney was at his apartment complex in Albertville, according to authorities. Trombetta was apparently also there after the two men recently met and Chaney let him stay at his place for a few days.
Chaney said the two were cooking, "hanging out watching TV," and planning to go kayaking the following day when everything changed.
"I was caught off guard, because we went from cooking steaks … to you just slit my throat, you know, and so of course I get up, start trying to grab my phone off the nightstand, and that's just when he just starts stabbing me in the back," the victim told the local TV station.
The two men reportedly struggled until Chaney fell onto the floor. He suggested that a survival instinct took over him.
"I just remember thinking, 'you cannot die like this,' Chaney said. "The whole time I was fighting him, that's what I was thinking."
Chaney got the knife away from Trombetta and fought back. Officers with the Albertville Police Department responded to the scene and said both men were still there.
Chaney — with more severe injuries than Trombetta — gave his side of the story, authorities said. Officers spotted a kitchen knife covered in blood in the apartment's bedroom.
An investigator said that a camera inside the apartment would have captured the entire attack, but two hours beforehand, Trombetta had faced it the other way.
The defendant is being detained in the Marshall County Jail without bond.
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