YORK COUNTY, Pa. — An Edgewood man is in custody after allegedly stabbing a 5-year-old girl and her mother to death, inside their Pennsylvania home.
It happened Monday night on Firebox Court, in Stewartstown, which is part of Hopewell Township in York County.
Neighbor Lou Bellman told WMAR-2 News that a man emerged from the house covered in blood. He apparently walked into a nearby pond with water up to his chest, before coming to shore where neighbors held him until police arrived.
Responding officers arrested 31-year-old Keith Kretzer. He was charged with two counts each of criminal homicide and attempted homicide.
According to charging documents, Kretzer told police that he was preparing dinner in the basement with his girlfriend, 34-year-old Christine Fousek, and her daughter, "when a force took over him.”
He claimed that same force drove him to pick up a knife and fatally stab Christine and her child.
Kretzer then went upstairs and stabbed 63-year-old Jacqueline Fousek, before barging into 28-year-old Joseph Fousek's room, and stabbing him. Both were hospitalized with serious injuries.
It was Joseph who eventually wrestled the knife away.
That's when Kretzer claims to have "snapped out of it."
"I fu**ked up and went and killed people," Kretzer reportedly told police.
Bellman said he heard the piercing screams from across the street.
“From the mom or from the grandmother and then seeing him with full bloody face. Yes, it was a lot," Bellman said.
Those close to the family say the child was preparing for her first day of kindergarten, and that she was especially excited to play soccer.
“We know them really well, and I can’t imagine what the grandmother is going to think when she finds out, and the little girl was just outside this past weekend saying how happy she was to start soccer and school,” Bellman said.
Along with the bloodied knife, police also found marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms inside the house.
Kretzer is from Edgewood, but neighbors said the Fousek's had taken him into their home, allowing him to live with them up until the day he turned a knife on them.
“Some people are just evil,” said Keith Safford, from Hopewell Township. “The only way you deal with evil is you have to take them out.”
