A 50-year-old Port Townsend man is facing a felony charge of first-degree assault after he was arrested for allegedly stabbing a 42-year-old woman in a mobile home Sunday morning.

John Lewis Allen was ordered held on $500,000 bail.

Prosecutors alleged he stabbed his partner multiple times in the chest, neck, abdomen, and left leg after an argument that alarmed his neighbors on Pelican Place south of Port Townsend.

Neighbors reportedly saw Allen and a woman arguing outside a motorhome, and a witness allegedly saw Allen hitting the woman.

When a friend of a neighbor tried to stop the assault, Allen allegedly said something like “I will blow your head off!” and pulled the woman into the motorhome, where the assault continued.

Police and deputies called to the scene found Allen barricaded inside the motorhome, according to court papers, and forced their way inside, finding Allen and a woman with serious stabbing injuries on the floor.

The woman was taken by a medical airlift helicopter to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

She was listed in critical condition at
11 p.m. Sunday and was undergoing emergency surgery, Detective Sgt. Brett Anglin of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office told The Leader.

Allen made his first appearance in Jefferson County Superior Court Tuesday.

Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Tuppence Macintyre asked that bail be set at $500,000 given the violent nature of the alleged assault.

“This is a very serious, violent offense,” Macintyre said.

She noted that the same victim had a no-contact order against Allen, one that stemmed from a March 2022 second-degree assault case where Allen was arrested after he allegedly strangled the victim, who was found with blood coming out of her nose.

Allen was also arrested on a third-degree assault against the same woman in December 2022 while a separate no-contact order was in place.

His criminal history also includes convictions for second-degree burglary and first-degree criminal trespassing.

Macintyre praised the “Good Samaritan neighbors who called law enforcement and saved her life” as well as the quick thinking of responding officers.

“She has very serious injuries,” Macintyre said of the woman.

Anglin, a detective with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, said multiple neighbors called 911 about 11:30 a.m. Feb. 19 to report a fight between a man and a woman on a property on Pelican Place.

Anglin said the man was seen striking and pushing the woman.

“Deputies and officers from
Port Townsend arrived on scene where they could hear a male subject screaming within a motorhome,” Anglin said.

Officers forced their way into the home after the man refused to open the door “and they had significant concerns over the female in the structure,” he said.

“They encountered a male subject who was noncompliant and making statements to the effect that she was dead,” Anglin added.

The woman was found in the motorhome with multiple stab wounds and she was “bleeding profusely.”

A team from the Washington State Patrol’s crime lab arrived at the home on Pelican Place about
9 a.m. Monday. 

The motorhome described by police as the location of the stabbing was parked in a driveway to a manufactured home. Yellow police tape was strung from the trees around the lot, with the tape cut near the street so the crime lab van could park near the mobile home. The property appeared cluttered, with large stacks of items covered by sheets of black plastic. Piles of discarded items, including a broken bicycle, bookmarked one end of the home.

The motorhome appeared to be a late-model, tan-and-white camper van, with its top covered with moss. Multiple large, red plastic gas cans were strewn on the ground near the back end of the vehicle.

Anglin said investigators would continue to gather evidence at the scene through Monday.

According to court documents, an aid crew began life-saving efforts on the woman once they arrived. 

Allen was taken into custody, and gave a long, “convoluted” history of his relationship with the woman.

“In the process, he believed she was involved in planting a device inside of him,” a deputy wrote in the statement of probable cause for Allen’s arrest.

Allen also allegedly said the woman had implanted devices into the bodies of other people, all of whom had injuries to their right legs that was evidence of the implants.

He also talked about his neighbors having large amounts of WiFi signals, and mentioned tracking devices that followed law enforcement officers.

“Allen made several other odd statements related to secret websites, pieced together clips of people making pornography, video tampering of his security cameras, and many other strange statements,” according to court documents.

Allen also allegedly told officers he did not assault the woman, and said “he was too busy standing at the doorway talking to law enforcement to know what happened to her,” according to the statement of probable cause. “He continued to claim he didn’t even know she was stabbed and that he figured she was having a medical emergency with her heart.”

Allen’s next court appearance has been scheduled for Friday, Feb. 24.