Michael Harju, age 36, of No Fixed Address

NASHUA – Officers who responded to a “frantic” 911 call early Tuesday morning from a woman screaming she had been stabbed arrived to find her covered in blood, suffering from a laceration serious enough to send her into surgery as soon as she arrived at St. Joseph Hospital by ambulance, according to police.

The woman, a resident of Burke Street, was the first of three bloodied people police would find at three different locations within an hour that morning, the result of an alleged attempt by one of them to steal a backpack – reportedly containing drugs – from the woman.

When everything was sorted out, the suspect, Michael Harju, 36, of no fixed address, had arrived at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston for treatment of wounds he sustained in the fracas, while the woman and a man, described as her boyfriend, were undergoing treatment at St. Joseph Hospital.

Meanwhile, detectives with the department’s Criminal Investigation Division were putting together a warrant for Harju’s arrest, based on interviews with the alleged victims and other witnesses and evidence they recovered from the Burke Street residence as well as a Mason Street apartment, where a friend of Harju’s lives with her mother, and where Harju went after the fight, police said.

Once Harju was released from Mass. General, Boston police took custody of him on the Nashua warrant.

At his arraignment Wednesday in Suffolk County Court, Harju waived extradition and was returned to New Hampshire and jailed pending his Thursday arraignment on 10 charges, all of which are Class A felonies.

They include eight counts of first-degree assault and one count each of burglary and robbery, according to police.

Harju was ordered held on preventive detention as his case moves forward in court.

In a post-arrest interview with Nashua detectives, Harju allegedly admitted to going to the woman’s residence “without invitation, to steal her backpack that contained illicit drugs,” police wrote in their reports.

They said Harju also “admitted to getting into an altercation” with the woman and her boyfriend, during which he allegedly “pulled out a folding knife and stabbed both of them before obtaining the backpack and fleeing the residence.”

Dean Shalhoup may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.

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