Warrant: Man wanted to cut off woman’s fingers and eat them in front of her to ‘scare her’

ROWAN COUNTY, N.C. (WBTV) - According to a search warrant obtained by WBTV, a man charged with attempted first-degree murder after he allegedly tried to stab a woman to death inside his home was planning on killing more people, including his parents and former classmates in school “who bullied him.”

WARNING: This story contains graphic details that may be disturbing to some readers.

Deputies say they received a call on Wednesday, Feb. 15, from a woman saying she was attacked. She told deputies that Hunter Chase Nance, 24, came up to her at the QT gas station just off I-85 in Kannapolis and the two exchanged phone numbers.

Later that day, deputies say Nance offered to pick her up and take her back to his home on Peaceful Lane in China Grove. A new search warrant says that the two met at the Circle K in China Grove and then drove over to Nance’s home.

The warrant says when they got to the home, Nance locked the door, then picked up a steak knife from the kitchen and attacked the woman in an attempt to “stab her in the chest.”

The woman managed to block the assault and take the knife away from Nance, according to the warrant. The woman’s hands were cut during the incident.

The woman then ran from the house and flagged down a passerby who agreed to take her to her car, which was parked back at the Circle K in China Grove.

911 calls obtained by WBTV include callers who say the woman flagged them down as she ran from the house.

“She’s bleeding and she flagged me down and said that her boyfriend had cut her, and her hands were all bloody and she needed a ride,” one caller says. “I told her I needed to get home and she kept going. She was crying and her hands were bloody. She said her boyfriend stabbed her.”

Deputies responded to the Circle K where the woman was being treated by Rowan County EMS.

Deputies then went to the house on Peaceful Lane where the woman said she had been attacked. Nance was located there and arrested, initially charged with false imprisonment and assault with a deadly weapon, but attempted first-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping charges were also added.

According to the warrant, while Nance was being booked at the jail he told investigators that he wanted to stab the woman 25 times and drag her body to “the roadway for passing vehicles to see.”

Nance also said that he planned to “cut her fingers off before killing her in order to eat them in front of her to scare her.”

The warrant also states that Nance said his motive for trying to kill the woman was to “begin satisfying a list of people he wanted to kill.”

“The list began with a random person,” the warrant says, “who would give him the experience to know what it was like to kill someone.”

The warrant says Nance added that once he had killed the woman, he “would be able” to kill his mother, father, and “past classmates who bullied him in school.”

Nance is being held under a bond of $1.2 million. He is due in court on March 8 for a probable cause hearing.

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