A Cranston, Rhode Island, man wanted in a stabbing that left another man in critical condition last week was arrested on Thursday morning, November 12, in a garage at a residence in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Cranston police say the department's Flock automated license plate reader cameras are what identified him as a suspect in the first place. David Mendez, 55, of Cranston, was taken into custody without incident at about 9:30 a.m., the Cranston Police Department said in a statement on Thursday.
Source: Cranston Police Department statement (Nov. 12, 2026), via Fall River Reporter
Mendez had been tracked since the stabbing by members of the Rhode Island State Police Violent Fugitive Task Force and the Massachusetts State Police Violent Fugitive Apprehension Section, and the U.S. Marshals Service helped with the investigation and the arrest, the department said. Investigators also found and seized, at a separate address in New Bedford, the vehicle police have tied to the stabbing.
How a partial plate became a suspect within minutes
Cranston detectives started with a witness's description of the vehicle used in the stabbing, police said. They ran a targeted search of the department's own Flock ALPR system using that description and a partial license plate, and the search turned up a matching vehicle in the immediate area of the stabbing. Investigators then learned the vehicle was registered to a Cranston resident, and that Mendez had previously been stopped by Cranston officers while driving it. Mendez also matched the physical description the witness gave — and those findings, police said, quickly gave detectives a suspect and let them focus the search on finding him.
"Within minutes of this violent attack, our detectives were able to utilize a witness's description of the suspect vehicle and our Flock ALPR system to identify a vehicle of interest and develop a viable suspect," Col. Michael Winquist, Cranston's police chief, said in the department's statement. "That initial investigative work set in motion a coordinated effort that ultimately resulted in this arrest." Winquist thanked the two state fugitive units and the Marshals Service for locating and arresting Mendez, and thanked the witness who came forward.
The stabbing on Park Avenue
The stabbing happened on Friday, November 6, in the parking lot of an apartment complex on Park Avenue in Cranston. Officers found a 46-year-old man seated in a black Maserati with multiple stab wounds to his arm and chest, and gave him medical aid at the scene — Winquist said the first officers used their tactical medical training and equipment to control the man's bleeding — until Cranston firefighters took him to Rhode Island Hospital, where he had surgery, the department said in its release last week. The man, who has not been publicly identified, remains hospitalized, and police said on Thursday that his condition has been upgraded from critical to stable.
Source: Patch Cranston, Nov. 10, 2026 (quoting Cranston Police release)
Mendez and the injured man had a prior relationship, the department said, and police described the attack from the start as targeted rather than random. Detectives are still investigating the nature of that relationship and what led to the stabbing — no motive has been publicly stated, and Mendez has not yet had a chance to answer the Rhode Island charge in court. The allegation against him is exactly that, an allegation: he is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
Arraigned as a fugitive — what Massachusetts law does next
Mendez was arraigned in New Bedford District Court as a fugitive from justice, NBC 10 (WJAR) reported on Thursday, citing officials, and WPRI 12's account of the arrest agrees. An arrest warrant for him had been issued on Friday, November 6, the day of the stabbing. A fugitive-from-justice case is how a Massachusetts court handles a person wanted in another state: state law allows officers to arrest a person charged in another state with a crime punishable by more than a year in prison, requires that the person be brought before a court promptly, and allows the court to hold the person for up to 30 days so they can be arrested on a governor's warrant and returned, unless bail is given.
Source: NBC 10 News (WJAR), Nov. 12, 2026
Once he is returned to Rhode Island, Mendez will be charged with felony assault in the stabbing, Cranston police said. That Rhode Island case — not the Massachusetts fugitive proceeding — is where the evidence about November 6 will actually be tested.
The arrest lands in the middle of a plate-camera fight
The technology Cranston is crediting for this arrest is, at the same moment, at the center of a political fight in the city where Mendez was caught. In New Bedford, Mayor Jon Mitchell wrote in a November 4 letter that the city's Police Department had chosen not to renew its Flock contract, which runs out on Thursday, November 12 — the day of the arrest — and the City Council is set to take up the mayor's veto of its own ban on the cameras at 6 p.m. on Friday, November 13, at City Hall. Fairhaven voters take up a citizens' petition to ban Flock cameras at town meeting on Tuesday, November 17, and Lakeville voters consider a plate-reader ban of their own on Wednesday, November 18. Supporters of the systems point to arrests exactly like this one; opponents raise privacy and data-retention concerns about cameras that log the movements of every passing car, not only suspects' cars.
What happens next: Mendez faces return to Rhode Island and a felony assault charge there, while Cranston detectives continue working to establish the full circumstances of the November 6 assault. Cranston police ask anyone with information about the stabbing to call the department at 401-942-2211. The injured man's recovery — critical on Friday, stable by Thursday — remains the other half of this story, and his name has not been released.