JAMES BENNETT jbennett@c-dh.net

https://www.columbiadailyherald.com/

HOHENWALD – Samantha Clifft testified Thursday that her estranged husband stabbed her eight times after he pulled out a deer-hunting knife inside Walmart and she asked what he planned to do with it.

Speaking publicly for the first time about the attempted-murder case in Lewis County General Sessions Court, Clifft testified that 26-year-old Airick Clifft stabbed her all over her body during the brutal attack just after midnight June 17.

The suspect, who is being held without bond, was bound over to the grand jury by Judge Michael E. Hinson.

Clifft listened less than 15 feet away as his wife described the incident on the witness stand.

“On June 12, I left him. And on June 17, he walked 3 miles to where I was working,” Samantha Clifft said. “He walked up to me. I told him I was done with him, I hated him and wanted nothing to do with him.”

That conversation happened near the cheese aisle in Walmart, and Airick Clifft walked away and spoke with some of her co-workers, she testified. He came back 10 minutes later and asked where she got a new fishing hat.

“I said, ‘From a friend,” Clifft said. “He said, ‘Why him and not me?’

“I said, ‘Because he makes me happy.’ That’s when he pulled out the knife.”

Clifft, 22, thought her husband of 6 years was threatening suicide. She chided him and called him a derogatory name.

“I said, ‘What are you going to do with a knife, try to kill yourself, you stupid [expletive]?” Clifft said.

In an instant, Clifft said she was under attack and fighting for her life. She said her husband did not say a word as he stabbed her repeatedly.

“He stabbed my neck, my chest, my arm, my hand, the back of my neck and my jaw,” Clifft said. “I believe the blade was about 4-to-5-inches long.”

She was flown to Vanderbilt Medical Center with life-threatening injuries and almost lost her left arm to amputation, she testified. District Attorney Stacey Edmondson asked if there were a time when she thought she would not survive.

“Yes. I was there for 15 days,” Clifft said. “When I first got there, he had cut two arteries. My left lung collapsed, and I almost lost my left arm.”

On cross examination, defense attorney David Christensen asked Clifft if her husband’s had been acting unusually.

“He did, especially at the very end of our relationship,” Clifft said. “I packed up all of my stuff, left June 12 and lived in my car. I stayed at a friend’s house, starting on Monday, June 13.”

Christensen wondered if the friend who gave Clifft the fishing hat was a “boyfriend or just a friend.”

“It was just a friend,” she said.

“Did Mr. Clifft think it was more than a friend?” Christensen asked.

“I guess he did,” she responded.

After the attack, Walmart workers pulled Clifft off of his wife, according to police reports, and kept him from killing himself.

“Airick was covered in blood,” a police officer wrote in his report. “He was saying to us, as we were trying to hold pressure to slow the bleeding of his cuts, ‘Just let me die.’ “

Clifft was treated for his wounds and sent to the Lewis County jail, where he has been since the attack. He has undergone psychiatric examinations, according to court records.

The victim’s family fears the suspect will attempt to claim an insanity defense, hoping to avoid jail time.

Meanwhile, after being released from Vanderbilt, the former Walmart and IBEX employee and dog lover has been receiving treatment for a blood clot and seeing doctors. She has stopped going to Vanderbilt because of a lack of funds.

“She has a kind heart,” said her aunt, Tammy Miller. “I don’t understand how anyone could ever hurt her.”

James Bennett is editor of The Daily Herald. Contact him at jbennett@c-dh.net.