"I tried to stop him": Woman talks about witnessing fatal stabbing attack

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MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) - A woman who witnessed a brutal murder of 62-year-old Deborah Lynch on Milwaukee’s south side is talking about what she saw that day.

Lynch, who is in a wheelchair, was stabbed 116 times.

Yvonne Lytge was watching TV that morning in her apartment.

“I heard a noise and I couldn’t figure out what the noise was,” said Lytge, “and it’s not stopping.”

She eventually went out in the hall, and that’s when she heard the sound of a struggle coming from Lynch’s apartment.

“Help, I need some help,” Lytge remembers hearing, “She’s going ‘help he’s attacking me.’”

On the other side of the door, Lynch was fighting for her life, being repeatedly stabbed.

Lytge tried to get through the door but it was locked.

She heard Lynch yell to try the back door, so she ran there, and that’s when she saw the attack through the window.

“I saw this man standing over her attacking, they were struggling,” said Lytge “she was fighting to try to keep him off, she was trying to hold his hands.”

But as hard as she tried, she couldn’t get through that door.

“I was pounding on the door,” Lytge said as she broke down in tears.

“I just thought, I need to stop, if I got the door open he’ll stop, and I never thought beyond that point,” said Lytge.

She said she was close enough to see the attackers face.

“I was fixated on him, and he had this just nasty, angry, rage look on his face,” said Lytge,”he didn’t even look up at the window that we were pounding on, he didn’t, nothing, it was like he was in a zone.”

Lytge ran back inside and got her brother, who also tried to break through the door.

Lytge called police, and then returned to the back door.  By that time the man had run out the back door, and around to the front.

When police arrived, they had a suspect, 31-year-old Kehinde Afolayan at gunpoint.

“I opened up the door and there were four more police officers with their guns drawn saying don’t move, they arrested him right there on the landing,” said Lytge.

And even though she did everything she could to help, she is left with regret.

”I just wish I could’ve gotten in there to help her,” Lytge said through the tears, “there is something else I could’ve done.”

Afolayan is charged with first degree intentional homicide.

Lytge says she is still trying to process what happened, and no longer leaves her doors unlocked.

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