Man charged in Madison Park bar stabbing

The King County Prosecutor’s Office has filed a second-degree assault charge against a man who allegedly stabbed a bar patron for taking his seat at The Red Onion in Madison Park on Sept. 29.

Officers responded to the tavern in the 4200 block of East Madison Street around midnight Saturday, Sept. 29, where they found the alleged victim sitting in a chair while another patron was applying pressure to a stab wound. He had multiple lacerations, according to a police report.

The alleged victim said he’d been sitting in the Red Onion with a friend when the suspect, identified in court records as Joshua K. Schroeter, 56, came up and requested he give him back his seat, but his friend said she didn’t want him to. Schroeter had left the seat earlier to sing karaoke.

The alleged victim said Schroeter started pushing him, trying to get him off the chair. He said he thought the man was “putting a deep elbow in my ribs? but it turns out he was putting a blade in my ribs,” according to the report. It was later determined at Harborview Medical Center that the victim suffered a punctured lung.

Another patron came forward and reported being “body checked” by the same suspect and in the same chair an hour earlier.

Officers were directed to Cactus restaurant, where witnesses told police they’d stopped Schroeter and told him to wait for law enforcement. Schroeter was found sitting on the curb outside. The police report states the 3-inch folding knife was found two feet to his right, with blood on the blade.

“He assaulted me, I defended myself,” the suspect allegedly said. “That’s all I have to say.”

Prior to being booked into King County Jail for investigation of assault, the suspect was interviewed at the East Precinct police station.

“There was an altercation?” he reportedly told investigators. “I probably didn’t handle it as well as I should’ve.”

Schroeter will have an arraignment hearing on Oct. 17, and a bond has been set at $200,000.

“Although the defendant has no apparent criminal history, his willingness to stab a stranger in front of onlookers over something as trivial as a bar seat causes significant concerns about the safety of community members if he is not in confinement,” the prosecutor’s office wrote in its bail request.