Defendant Says He Didn’t Stab Missing Man : Court: The vanished purported victim bloodied himself, says alleged assailant filmed by security camera. Convenience store witnesses say he knifed the victim.

Carlsbad man charged with attempted murder in a case in which the alleged victim has disappeared testified Monday that he didn’t stab anybody, but that the unknown man bloodied himself while grabbing for the knife of the accused.

However, the anonymous tall Asian man who is believed to be the victim wasn’t around to contradict the Vista Superior Court testimony of 24-year-old Rodney Lee Graham.

That’s because the man fled after the Dec. 6 incident, most of which was recorded on a security camera inside the Oceanside 7-Eleven where it happened, and hasn’t been found, although authorities searched morgues and hospitals.

Graham told the court that prosecution witnesses were wrong in describing how he assaulted a helpless victim with punches and knife jabs. Instead, he claimed, the man tried to wrest his knife away during the encounter.

“He grabbed onto the knife (blade), and he wouldn’t let go. I told him to let go, but he wouldn’t,” Graham testified. “I guess it was while I was trying to get the knife back from him that he got cut.”

Graham testified that he was drunk and in a self-service laundry next door to the 7-Eleven at Via las Rosas and El Camino Real when he asked the Asian man to buy him beer, giving the stranger $20.

But the man immediately ran off with the money, and Graham chased him into the 7-Eleven, he testified.

After yelling at the man several times to give back his $20, Graham unsheathed a 4-inch knife that, he testified, he used only to threaten the victim into returning the money.

Despite prodding by Deputy Dist. Atty. Greg Walden, Graham repeatedly insisted that he did not stab the missing victim.

But, outside the courtroom, Walden said the testimony of three previous prosecution witnesses, all of whom were clerks at the convenience store, was more than enough to show that there had been a violent, bloody attack.

In testimony last week, one clerk said that blood gushed from the victim’s neck “like a small geyser,” and other witnesses have testified that they saw severe wounds on the victims head and neck.

William Saunders, the public defender for Graham, attempted to build an argument for a lesser charge, such as attempted manslaughter or assault with a deadly weapon, by trying to establish that a combination of provocation, anger and alcohol put Graham in a position where “he was not operating with all of his capacities.”

“Clearly the man was in a rage, and clearly he is in a rage over money, and he had been drinking beforehand,” Saunders said outside the courtroom.

Oceanside Police Sgt. Leonard Mata also testified Monday that, five hours after the alleged attack, Graham had a blood alcohol level of 0.09%, slightly above the legal limit, and that he failed several coordination and eye movement tests that indicated that he might have been under the influence of drugs.

A urine test, however, later showed that Graham had not taken any stimulants, and he denied using marijuana.