Divers searched a lake in southern Bartholomew County hoping to find a knife used in the stabbing of a 28-year-old Indianapolis man.
Indiana Department of Natural Resources and Bartholomew County Sheriff’s Department divers were combing the bottom of the Grouse Ridge fishing area Thursday using a metal detector and their hands to search for a small knife used in a stabbing incident.
The sheriff’s department had received a 911 call from a home near the fishing area about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday where Ashley Horn, 29, Columbus, told officers her estranged husband, Tyler Horn, 32, 5064 Vance St., had attacked and stabbed a male friend of hers at the fishing area.
Ashley Horn was at the end of the dam along the shore of the Grouse Ridge lake with Philleep Dunn, 28, Indianapolis, when the incident happened, said Bartholomew County Sheriff Capt. Chris Roberts, who leads the sheriff’s department detectives division.
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Divers were searching the water along the dam shoreline for a small knife that Tyler Horn is believed to have used in the stabbing, which occurred somewhere on top of the dam, Roberts said.
After the incident, Tyler Horn fled from the scene and Ashley Horn and Dunn walked to a nearby house to call 911 because cell service is spotty in the lake area, Roberts said. Dunn was transported by LifeLine helicopter to Indiana University Health Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, where he was listed Thursday in stable condition, hospital officials said.
A search ensued for Tyler Horn, who called investigators and turned himself in early evening Wednesday, Roberts said. Horn is being held in the Bartholomew County Jail without bond on a preliminary charge of battery with a deadly weapon, jail officials said.
Thursday’s search for the knife involved 11 divers, including four from the sheriff’s department, and the rest were DNR officers from nearby counties.
“We’re looking for a very small item in a large area,” said Corp. Jet Quillen, conservation officer who works in DNR’s law enforcement division out of Indianapolis.
Grouse Ridge is a 20-acre, man-made reservoir about nine miles southwest of Columbus, known for its fishing. Its maximum depth is about 23 feet, according to the DNR, but divers were concentrating their search in water that was 6 to 14 feet deep near the dam, Quillen said.
A metal detector being used by the divers had turned up soft drink cans, fishing lures and other metal debris, but officers had not found the knife by Thursday afternoon, despite some repeated signals from the metal detector in an area near an overflow structure.
“We don’t know if we’ll be able to find anything,” Roberts said. “The problem is we don’t have a person who saw where the individual dropped the knife in.”
DNR personnel also were searching the bank along the dam in case the knife was in the brush along the water.
