UNION TOWNSHIP (Union County) — When Hernan Agudelo looked out his sunroom window Friday into a dark morning, he had trouble seeing what was unfolding in his neighbors' yard. But he knew something was terribly wrong.

The 33-year-old husband and father walked out the front door of his Union Township house, went around the fence and into a yard strewn with items cleared out of a shed.

There, he said, he witnessed a nightmare scene: A strange man was attacking one of his neighbors with a 10-inch, double-bladed knife.

"Just go!" the man snapped as he rose to face Agudelo. "I don’t want to kill you or anything."

Agudelo walked to his car, grabbed a small souvenir baseball bat, then returned to the backyard, where he swung for the attacker’s head, cracking it open, police said. He then tackled the man and held him until police arrived.

Agudelo interrupted a bizarre attack, one that left two women near death, their bodies riddled with knife and hatchet wounds allegedly inflicted by Morgan Mesz, a 25-year-old who claimed he had been searching for "the portal to hell," according to police in the suburban Union County town.

Authorities are calling him nothing short of a hero.

"This act of selflessness and bravery is commendable," Union County Prosecutor Theodore Romankow said. "Without Mr. Agudelo’s brave actions, this situation could have been much worse."

Both women — 53-year-old Carolyn Bunnell and 50-year-old Barbara Perrine — were listed in critical condition last night in University Hospital in Newark. The two encountered Mesz after noticing all the things had been taken out of their shed and tossed into their yard on Longview Road, township Police Director Dan Zieser said.

"One woman opens the shed door and they were immediately pounced upon," he said.

Mesz, who lives on nearby Nottingham Way with a girlfriend, repeatedly stabbed both women until Agudelo intervened, Zieser said.

When officers arrived, the suspect was walking toward the front yard, blood running down his body, and Agudelo was screaming for them to stop him, the police director said. Mesz received stitches at the hospital and underwent a mental evaluation.



Friday night, the prosecutor's office announced it had charged him with three counts of attempted murder. His bail was set at $1.5 million.

After his capture, there was concern that the suspect could injure someone else, Zieser said. During his rambling religious diatribes, he told police he had "cleansed" a neighbor on his street Thursday night, the director said.

Officers scoured his block before finding a woman who said Mesz had arrived at her house that night and wouldn’t leave for hours. She was not injured.

Agudelo, who was treated at University Hospital and released, said he too had heard wild religious talk from Mesz as he held him to the ground after the pre-6 a.m. attack. At one point, the man asked if Agudelo was Peter or John, the Apostles. He also offered some horrifying insight about why he may have been at the Longview Road home, the good Samaritan said.

"He told me that they were sacrificing children there," he said yesterday afternoon, talking from the steps of his house. "That he came to kill them."

Staff videographer Adya Beasley contributed to this report.

Previous coverage:

• Union Township man stabs two women after clearing out their shed seeking 'portal to hell'