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Warrant issued for Elgin man accused of stabbing wife

Authorities issued an arrest warrant for a man accused of stabbing his wife before he injured himself on Monday evening at their home in Elgin's Valley Creek subdivision.

The warrant was issued for Rigoberto Catalan, 56, of the 600 block of Shenandoah Trail, for one count of aggravated domestic battery, a Class 2 felony, Elgin Police Cmdr. Ana Lalley said in a news release.

Catalan was under police guard while hospitalized with injuries to his neck at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge; his 42-year-old wife, whom police did not identify, is hospitalized with injuries to her torso at Presence Saint Joseph Hospital in Elgin, Lalley said.

Both individuals' injuries are serious but not life threatening, she said.

Next-door neighbor Hector Caballero said he was outside working on his fence around 7:25 p.m. when he saw the couple's 17-year-old daughter run out of the house, followed by her mother, who was bleeding from her side, and the youngest daughter, 10.

"(The 17-year-old) was running, screaming, saying, 'Call 911,'" he said.

Caballero ran into his house to grab his cellphone and ran back outside to comfort the woman and her daughters.

While he was on the phone with emergency operators, the 17-year-old daughter went back into her house, he said. "She came running back out, saying, 'My dad is cutting his throat,'" he said. "She was even more hysterical."

Caballero said his wife brought out a folding chair for the injured woman so she could sit down while waiting for paramedics to arrive.

Elgin police and paramedics arrived shortly after, and both individuals were taken away by ambulance, he said.

Catalan and his wife were injured after "a domestic related dispute," Lalley said. She declined to say what the dispute was about, citing the ongoing investigation.

Catalan will appear in Kane County bond court at a later date, police said.

The family had been renting the place for a couple of years and mostly kept to themselves, with the exception of a few loud parties last summer, Caballero said.

The couple also have an older son in his 20s who seems to have moved out recently, he said.

Valley Creek is usually a quiet subdivision but had a rash of burglaries around the Fourth of July, Caballero said. "After all this happened, I couldn't really sleep," Caballero said.

• Daily Herald staff writer Safiya Merchant contributed to this report.

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