Victim in weekend stabbing case charged with assault and battery

The victim of an early Saturday morning stabbing now faces assault charges of his own.

Dustin P. Lauterback, 19, of Waynesboro, faces two charges of assault and battery. The teen was allegedly stabbed by Nathaniel Dofflemyer, 20, of Verona, during a fight in a field near Crimora, according to court records.

Dofflemyer and Casey Lowe, 20, pressed assault charges against Lauterback on Wednesday.

“Dustin started picking a fight with me and I told him to go on and leave me alone,” Dofflemyer wrote in a court statement. “He ... got in my face and grabed [sic] my shirt I pushed him away and he came back at me swinging his fist so I defended myself ... he hit me with a blunt object in my head I was knocked out for a while ... ”

Witnesses to the stabbing described a melee involving at least a half-dozen people, who fought near a bonfire in a field off Robert Turk Lane near Rockfish Road — a property partially kept up by Augusta County Sheriff Randy Fisher. Farmers and neighbors said teens frequently trespass, party and vandalize farm equipment at the site and have asked for law enforcement monitoring. The sheriff said he regularly checks the property.

The sheriff’s son, Alex Fisher, is listed in court records as a witness to the stabbing. He drove Lauterback, a longtime friend, to Augusta Medical Center in Fishersville, said witness Coreena Coleman, 17, a friend of both teens.

Authorities said deputies responded at about 1:30 a.m., but declined to identify witnesses or describe the fight.

Lowe and another witness, Matthew Wimer, 20, of Verona — both friends of Dofflemyer — told The News Virginian as many as 30 people joined in the melee started between Lauterback and Dofflemyer. Lowe said she was punched in the face by Lauterback.

“Next thing I heard was people saying ‘dude you hit a girl, you hit a girl,’ ” she wrote in a court statement. The party then “turned on Lauterback,” Wimer said. He and Lowe then heard yelling about a stabbing, but said Dofflemyer had been unconscious.

“At the party it was very clear that not one person there knew who had done the stabbing ... everyone was screaming: ‘Who stabbed Dustin?’ ”

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Wimer, his sister, Lowe and Dofflemyer fled in a green Mitsubishi Galant and were chased by a white jeep into Waynesboro, Wimer said. Waynesboro police investigated a hit-and-run as part of that chase, but have not made arrest.

“When those people were following us, I really thought they were going to kill us,” Lowe said.

Wimer said his group made it to the hospital, where authorities from the sheriff’s office and Waynesboro police department conducted interviews.

“I am concerned about why my son was questioned for just a few moments in the ER when he was in pain,” said Regina Dofflemyer, the single mother of the stabbing suspect.

She said her son suffered a minor concussion.

He was arrested the next day.

“It has been very difficult and exhausting to have all this on top of you as a family,” she said. “I am more upset that these parties continued on that property … and that all parties involved are having to go through this crisis.”

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The incident in the field led to Dofflemyer’s second run-in with authorities over the weekend. He was charged with being drunk in public hours before the fight at a party in Verona, where more than a half-dozen others were charged with underage drinking.

Wimer and the party’s host said the later fight spawned at the first party, at which a friend of Lauterback’s accidentally got into Dofflemyer’s car.

“It was settled,” Wimer said. “No fists flying or nothing.”

Regina Dofflemyer brought her son home from the sheriff’s office after the drinking arrest, but he went back out with friends.

“It was his fault he went,” she said.

Lauterback and Dofflemyer are scheduled to appear in court in April and June, respectively.