An attorney will ask a DeWitt County jury this week to find his client not guilty of stabbing a volunteer firefighter because he was insane at the time.
Kirk Ross Engle, 45, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to stabbing Brian Smolik in the stomach on Aug. 19.
Smolik responded on Aug. 19 to the 400 block of West Sixth Street in Yorktown where brush, a couch and a trash can were ablaze.
Smolik testified Tuesday that Engle not only admitted to causing the fire, but did not want it to be extinguished. Smolik said Engle yelled obscenities at him and his fellow firefighters when they tried to extinguish it anyway.
Smolik said Engle stabbed him after he retrieved a water pump.
"I thought I had been punched in the stomach," said Smolik, who was treated at DeTar Hospital Navarro for four days in Victoria, three of which he spent in the intensive care unit.