Police briefs

2 men in fight are hurt with knife, pipe

Two men, one armed with a knife and the other with some type of metal pipe, were injured after fighting each other on a Poplar Grove street corner Friday, police say.

Just after 10:30 a.m., the men got into an argument near 900 West and 600 South, said Salt Lake police spokeswoman Lara Jones. It was unknown Friday what started the fight.

At first the confrontation was verbal, and then one man became physically aggressive with the other, Jones said. The man with the pipe was the aggressor, according to police.

The man he was beating had a knife and stabbed his attacker several times, Jones said. A third man eventually stepped in and tried to break the fight up.

Both men were transported to local hospitals in serious to critical condition. No arrests had been made as of early Friday afternoon. Jones said detectives were trying to determine if the man with the knife acted in self-defense.

— Pat Reavy

Man arrested in abduction of woman

LOGAN — Police have arrested a man they say abducted a woman off of the street at gunpoint.

The woman, 19, told police she was leaving Logan City Hall about 5 p.m. Thursday when a man approached her with a handgun and demanded that she give him a ride.

"They drove around Logan for quite a while," Logan Police Capt. Jeff Curtis said. "He commanded her to take him out to the mall. When they pulled up to the mall, he got out of the car and she drove off."

The victim called police immediately, but the man was not found. Officers later found a backpack, a red, hooded sweatshirt and a BB gun pistol in a trash bin a few blocks from the mall.

"She was pretty scared," Curtis said of the young woman, who he said was apparently picked out at random.

About the same time the victim was at the police station picking the man's picture out of a photo lineup, Curtis said, Anthony Nicholas Cornwell, 23, called 911 to report that he had also been abducted at gunpoint.

"He claimed that he had been held at gunpoint in an alley about a block away from where he actually committed the kidnapping," Curtis said, adding that Cornwell gave dispatchers the same description of the kidnapper as did the young woman.

"It was his attempt to appear more as a victim than as a suspect," Curtis said.