A man accused of stabbing three family members on Halloween night appeared in court on Nov. 17 to be formally charged with first-degree murder, among other charges.

Two women and a man were stabbed multiple times at a home in the 1400 block of El Paso Street on Halloween night. Officers arrived at the house and found a naked man, later identified as 33-year-old Matthew Regnier, a former teacher at Monument Academy, covered in blood while holding a child, according to court documents.

Authorities said the two women were hospitalized with life-threatening wounds. According to a GoFundMe page made for the victims, the women were released from the hospital on Nov. 12 and reunited with the child, a 2-year-old son of one of them.

The organizer of the GoFundMe, neighbor Brett Gardner, says on the webpage that the mother barely escaped death.

Regnier was arrested for the stabbing and is facing a first-degree murder charge, along with two counts of attempted murder in the first degree, three counts of first-degree assault and child abuse.

The quiet little community in Colorado Springs has been left picking up the pieces ever since.

Remnants of the night were still present on Nov. 5, with Halloween decorations still up while the rest of the community in the Patty Jewett neighborhood had taken theirs down.

The decorations at the home have been taken down since, but they served as a stark reminder of the horrific incident, said neighbor Paulette Mills.

The 62-year-old woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of police sirens and saw flashing lights outside her window.

“I walked out to see if I could figure out what’s going on, but it was so clear that it was big that I didn’t feel safe walking over,” Mills said.

Yellow police tape was draped across the street with Colorado Springs Police Department vehicles sitting in the middle of the usually busy road of El Paso Street.

Mills said law enforcement remained in the area for around 24 hours before leaving.

Authorities released the identity of the man killed in the stabbing, 31-year-old Raymundo Cabrera-Medina from Colorado Springs. Mills said the man was the brother of one of the women, Jessica, who was the wife of Matthew Regnier.

The couple got married in December of 2021, according to Matthew Regnier’s Facebook profile.

Next door neighbor David Clipp said he interacted with the family regularly, recalling a time that he and his wife attended a birthday for the Regnier’s son. But their relationship never progressed to anything beyond being friendly neighborhood acquaintances, as Matthew Regnier “seemed like a private person.”

“It all seemed pretty normal,” Clipp said. “They were friendly and neighborly … I never really saw anything that led you to thinking this would happen.”

Housing records show Matthew Regnier owned a home on Franklin Street, a four-minute walk from the house where the stabbing happened, before moving into the house on El Paso Street in September.

Records say it was previously owned by his mother, Amy Regnier, who also runs a real estate business in Colorado Springs. The home on El Paso Street was also previously owned by her.

Clipp said the family moved from the home on Franklin Street after Jessica Regnier’s mother and brother moved in because it was a bigger house.

A GoFundMe page update to the page said that Jessica Regnier underwent surgery to remove a lung, and her surgeon told her she had a 90% chance of death.

More about the suspect

According to his LinkedIn profile, Regnier graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in transportation design at a private art college in California called ArtCenter College of Design in 2018. Before that, he attended the Academy of Art University from 2011-12 and Kansas State University in 2010.

Before the stabbing, Regnier had been working as a secondary campus art teacher at Monument Academy since August 2023. The school administration said in a letter that he was fired following his arrest.

Regnier’s LinkedIn says he is a lead transportation designer for Rice Advanced Engineering Systems & Research (RAESR), a “visionary” automotive company based in Los Angeles that was founded in 2014, according to their website.

Before the stabbing, public records state he had no criminal history, only showing two traffic citations issued in California in 2020 and 2021.

He is in court for an apparent custody battle. On Nov. 5, he appeared for a temporary custody advisement hearing, and he is expected to appear again for a pretrial conference on Dec. 3.

Authorities haven’t shared any information on what led up to the stabbing.

Two 911 calls came from the 1400 block of North El Paso Street on Halloween, with one from a victim reporting a domestic disturbance and the other from Regnier about eight minutes later, claiming he had been attacked.

According to his arrest affidavit, Regnier told police that the three had tried to assault him, and he stabbed them out of self-defense. However, the detective notes in the document that physical evidence obtained at the scene doesn’t support the claim.

The police department had also been called on Sept. 26 for a domestic disturbance involving the family prior to the stabbing, according to the affidavit.

Clipp said the stabbing felt like it was “out of the blue.”

“This is the most neighborly neighborhood we’ve ever lived in, so it’s getting back to normal, but it’s been a shock for everybody,” Clipp said.