SLP Woman Allegedly Stabs Boyfriend with Steak Knife

A St. Louis Park woman has been charged with stabbing her boyfriend with two steak knives and threatening to kill him last week.

Rena Christine Dobervich, 26, is charged with two counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon, each of which carries a maximum penalty of seven years in prison and a $14,000 fine, and making terroristic threats, which has a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The assault charges each have a mandatory minimum penalty of three years in prison.

According to the criminal complaint, signed by St. Louis Park Police Detective Matthew Reilly, just before 4:30 a.m. Aug. 15 on a report of a stabbing.  

Officers found the victim with two puncture wounds on his chest, a puncture wound on his back near his armpit, and scrapes on his right leg and above his left hip. The victim told them that Dobervich, his live-in girlfriend, had stabbed him repeatedly.

A witness told officers that he had been upstairs in the home when he heard screaming. He said he came downstairs and saw Dobervich assaulting the victim and yelling that she was going to kill him, but he said he didn’t see any knives in her hands.

The witness said he went back upstairs, but when he heard the victim screaming, “She’s going to kill me,” he went back down and saw Dobervich on top of the man on the floor, stabbing him repeatedly with a steak knife in her right hand.

The witness said he wrestled the knife away from Dobervich, but the victim began to scream that she had another knife. Dobervich tried to stab the witness in the chest with a steak knife in her left hand, but he moved, causing the knife to scrape his right triceps, according to the complaint.

Police photographed several areas of blood spatter in the home and recovered two knives. As they arrested Dobervich, she appeared “very intoxicated” and was uncooperative, the complaint charges. En route to the St. Louis Park police station, she switched her handcuffs from behind her back to in front of her body, and said, “We’ll be all right. I’m going to have kids with that (expletive) I stabbed someday,” according to the complaint.

Dobervich has been released from custody on a $20,000 bond, and on the conditions that she not use alcohol or drugs and that she stay away from the victim. An omnibus hearing in her case is scheduled for Sept. 14 in Hennepin County District Court.