GUNTERSVILLE, Ala. (Waffle) – A Marshall County man was denied bond three days after brutally stabbing someone outside a Boaz restaurant.

River Hammett, 25, stabbed and killed Terfils Saint Juste, 38, Tuesday afternoon in the Western Sizzlin parking lot.

Boaz Chief Investigator Dustin Baker, the only witness at Friday’s hearing, was one of the first to respond to the incident.

Baker and others determined that Hammett used a large pocket knife to kill Saint Juste. He described the scene as “extremely horrific” and the worst he had ever seen.

Saint Juste was already dead when the police arrived. The cause of death was a stab wound to the heart, and Baker says there were other wounds to the abdomen and neck after he died.

Hammett – an employee of Western Sizzlin – was at the scene, covered in the victim’s blood. He claimed Saint Juste also had a knife, but authorities only found Hammett in a nearby dumpster.

Baker also testified that he spoke with a woman who said Saint Juste drove them to the area while she was looking for the address of an insurance agency.

None of Saint Juste’s family attended Friday’s hearing, but Hammett’s mother, Tindra, stood behind her son.

She says River was suffering a mental health crisis. He has been diagnosed with bipolar dysplasia and PTSD and is borderline schizophrenic.

River also has a history of receiving inpatient psychiatric care in Gadsden, along with multiple medications and follow-ups with doctors.

He had a doctor’s appointment on Tuesday morning and his mother noticed that he was acting unusually aggressive. She felt he could have been a danger to himself or others, so she tried to commit him to a mental hospital.

She says River’s psychiatrist also referred him, but community mental health officer Jason Doyle did not.

“(Doyle) said they weren’t going to help take (River) to the hospital because he passed all the checks, that they were just going to release him and send him home,” Hammett said. “This is a mental health thing that I’ve been trying to get help for, like really hard, for three years.”

Doyle instructed them to file a commitment petition in probate court to get River to a hospital. She dropped River off at his car in Western Sizzlin’s parking lot before she did.

Once he returned home, it was too late. Hammett says if the mental health system had done its job, two lives would have been saved.

“To the family, I’m sorry,” she said. “That doesn’t make anything better. I’m sorry that everything happened the way it did.”

Hammett says she still loves her son and will continue to pray that he gets the help he needs while he’s in prison.

River will remain in jail without bail and his preliminary hearing is set for Dec. 4.

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