GASTONIA, N.C. -- April Huffman is literally trying to put her home back together.

This morning's family fight ended with her son lying on the sidewalk, stabbed three times and her ex-husband handcuffed in the back seat of a patrol car.

“Then to stab your own son, that takes a cold and calculated heartless man,” Huffman said.

Police say Michael "LeRoy" Huffman used a Rambo style hunt knife to stab Michael Swain Huffman, a 28-year-old named after his father.

Some of his wounds are life threatening.

“I think it was a cruel and vicious and uncalled for,” Huffman said.

April Huffman says the younger Michael Huffman had recent run-ins with police.

The landlord of the South Webb Street residence where she and her ex-husband lives said their son couldn't return.

Huffman says before dawn she woke to the sound of her son's voice. “What are you going to do stab me?”

She says she jumped between father and son, and then her ex-husband pushed her out of the way.

“He was stabbed in his right shoulder and the second time he was stabbed in his liver,” Huffman said.

She says she helped her son try and escape and he dialed 911 from his cell phone, but collapsed on the sidewalk just outside of the house. She then grabbed the phone and talked to dispatchers.

When police arrived the knife was gone.

Gastonia Police Seargant West said, “It was discarded in some bushes. We actually had some K-9s come in and find it. I'm assuming he was trying to get rid of it.”

April Huffman says she will leave this house. “I just can not live with the fact that my husband stabbed my son.”

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