Neighbors nervous after couple stabbed

Eric Leake

Monday, Feb. 7, 2005 | 9:30 a.m.

Residents of a northwest Las Vegas neighborhood where an elderly couple was repeatedly stabbed were uneasy Sunday evening, answering doors through cracks or side windows.

Nicole Brooks said the attack, vicious though not fatal, was the sort of thing that happens somewhere else and left her questioning her family's safety.

"You hear about it on the news all the time, but when it happens so close, it really make you rethink a lot," she said. "I'm a lot more alert now."

Brooks recalled her neighbor Joyce Streit as one who went out of her way to welcome the family to the neighborhood and gave her gifts for her baby after she learned she was pregnant.

That her kind neighbor was so viciously attacked made her angry, Brooks said, and left her wondering why.

"You can make your point with one stab," she said.

But Joyce Streit, 66, was stabbed as many as 20 times when she found an intruder in her home Thursday evening, Metro Police reported. Her 70-year-old husband, Jerry Streit, heard her screams, ran downstairs and was stabbed at least three times, police said.

The attacker had walked up to the Streits' house on Dawn Isle Drive near Buffalo and Westcliff drives and entered through the garage after asking if a man named "Andy" lived there. He left with only the couple's car keys.

The intruder -- described as a Hispanic man between 18 and 20 years old and who had been wearing a white shirt and blue jeans -- has not been found.

The Streits were listed in good condition this morning at University Medical Center, officials said.

The day after the attack, neighbors Brian and Danielle Ward purchased a home security system.

"I have three kids. It makes me feel safer with an alarm," Danielle Ward said. "It could've been us."

Brian Ward taped the new security decal on their entryway window and said many neighbors seemed to be taking precautions. He pointed to all the yellow porch and door lights.

"It used to be you'd look down this street, and it'd be dark," he said.

His neighbor, 60-year-old Sonia Dos Santos, said the attack represented not only an individual but a societal failing.

"I was shocked. Society has to do a better way to teach people to respect their elders," she said.

Dos Santos,from Brazil, is hosting an international college student from Korea. A neighborhood attack is an American experience Dos Santos would rather her guest had done without.

"It is an awful show of what happens in America," she said.

"Everybody in the neighborhood is awfully scared," Dos Santos said.