Man charged with murder after stabbing

A man is charged with murder after a late-night stabbing leaves one man dead.

Officers arrived at the Lower Valley home, located on Maravilla Drive, just after 10 p.m., Friday. Authorities found Gerardo Juarez, the victim, with a stab wound to his upper body. Juarez was transported to Del Sol Medical Center, where he later died.

The investigation showed Ruben Canales and Juarez got into a verbal fight that quickly became physical. Police said  Canales grabbed a knife from the kitchen area of the home. As the two men struggled over the knife, Canales allegedly stabbed Juarez in the torso.

Canales was booked into the El Paso County Jail, with a bond set at $500,000.

KFOX14 spoke with a neighbor who lives right across the street from the home where the stabbing happened. He says the family had only been living there for about a month. He thinks the person stabbed was the father of the two girls who lived there. He also believes the suspect is the boyfriend of one of those daughters.

" I heard some sort of arguing, I heard someone slam the door, whoever it was, was trying to leave in the truck so I went inside and thought nothing of it," said neighbor Jose Alvarez.

Alvarez believes the family has already moved out as a result.

"It's sad, I've lived here for 25 years and nothing like this has ever happened, much less a stabbing," said Alvarez.

He realized it was something much more when detectives knocked on his door early in the morning to ask if he had seen anything.

This is the fourth murder this year, as compared to five at this same time in 2011.