A night of family fun turned terrifying after an altercation inside California’s biggest corn maze ended in a brutal stabbing attack.
The incident happened at Cool Patch Pumpkins in Dixon around 9:15 p.m. Friday, sending two people to the hospital.
The victims were described as 19-year-old man from Dixon and a 20-year-old man from Vallejo. The suspect, described as a 28-year-old Sacramento man, was arrested.
The investigation is still ongoing and the conditions of the victims remains unknown.
A spokesperson for the Solano County Sheriff’s Office described the violence as an “isolated incident” that occurred due to a “disagreement that escalated far beyond what it should have.”
“Clearing the corn maze at night was quite the challenge, but we did it — and we did recover some evidence,” told the San Francisco Chronicle, adding that investigators recovered a weapon at the scene.
Despite the attack, Cool Patch Pumpkins opened on Saturday.
“There was an altercation between some people yesterday in the corn maze. Police were called. They responded really fast. We’re a family-oriented pumpkin patch. Always have been,” Seth Cooley, son of the maze’s founder, told KCRA.
Cool Patch Pumpkins posted an announcement saying that “there is no current public safety threat,” adding that the maze is “committed to providing a safe, family-friendly environment for everyone.”
Founded in 2001 by Matt Cooley, Cool Patch Pumpkins started with his daughters selling pumpkins on the side of the road. It later grew to a family-run business that eventually housed California’s biggest corn maze and a pumpkin patch.
The corn maze grew so big that it was featured in the Guinness World Records in 2007 and 2014. It grew to 63 acres in 2014, but has been scaled down to around 40 acres today.
