2 More Women Report Blades in Car Seats

Two more Simi Valley women have reported finding razor-like utility-knife blades in their car seats, raising the number of victims reporting such crimes to at least 15 in Ventura County and Burbank, police said Thursday.

A suspect in the assaults, Gary Jean Muntifering, 53, an unemployed commercial fisherman from Ventura, was arrested by Burbank police Tuesday.

He was transferred Thursday to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department station in Thousand Oaks and was being held in lieu of $250,000 bail for arraignment Monday in Ventura County Municipal Court on 14 counts of assault with a deadly weapon for the attacks in Ventura County.

Burbank Detective Roger Mason said Burbank police will consider filing charges against Muntifering for the Burbank incident after the proceedings against him in Simi Valley have been completed. Burbank police also are trying to locate another woman who was reportedly cut with a blade in a Burbank parking lot but fled to get medical treatment before police arrived.

Mason said that about 10 victims, all women, were cut on the thigh when they sat on the blades. None of the women were seriously injured but some required stitches and received tetanus shots, police said.

Simi Valley Detective Bill Daniels said Muntifering apparently approached unlocked cars in large parking lots, made a slit in the car seat and inserted the blades until they were “protruding about an inch.” Daniels said Muntifering matches the description of a suspect given by two witnesses.

Burbank police arrested Muntifering during a stakeout at a K mart parking lot. Detectives said they found a .22-caliber revolver in his truck along with several dozen heavy-duty utility blades of the type discovered in the victims’ cars.

The blades--similar to razors but larger, stronger and pointed at the ends--are sold for use in industrial slicers.

No motive for the attacks was known, police said.

News of Muntifering’s arrest shocked his son, Robert Muntifering, 27, of Burbank.

“I find it hard to believe,” he said at a news conference outside the Burbank police station Thursday morning. “I can’t imagine him doing this.”

Julie Tamaki is a Times staff writer in the San Fernando Valley and Julie Fields is a special correspondent in Ventura County.