Police say a dispute over garbage left in a car ended with a chest wound that sent a 39-year-old man to intensive care.

DULUTH, Minn. — A 39-year-old man walked into a Duluth emergency room after 10 p.m. with blood covering much of his clothing and a stab wound in his upper chest. Hospital workers soon determined that one of his lungs had collapsed. The man told police he knew who had stabbed him and that the violence had begun with an argument over trash placed inside a car, according to court records described in multiple Minnesota reports.

The injured man’s arrival at Aspirus St. Luke’s Hospital on Aug. 13 became the starting point of a police investigation that led six days later to the arrest of Travis Lee Anthony Shockley, 38, of Duluth. Shockley has been charged with first-degree assault in connection with the stabbing. He also faces a fifth-degree drug possession charge and a count of fleeing a peace officer arising from his Aug. 19 arrest. The allegations have not been proven in court, and the available charging accounts do not include Shockley’s version of what happened during the confrontation.

Police were called to the hospital at about 10:20 p.m. after staff reported that a patient had been stabbed. The injured man had reached the emergency department on foot despite the wound, according to accounts of the criminal complaint. He identified Shockley as the person who had stabbed him. Medical workers determined that the wound had caused a collapsed lung, and the man was admitted to the intensive care unit. Other reporting on the court documents said medical staff placed a tube in his chest to drain air and blood. Publicly available reports do not say how long he remained hospitalized or describe his later recovery.

The case took shape from the account the injured man gave officers at the hospital. Court records cited by local reporting place the earlier confrontation at a friend’s garage in the 1000 block of East Third Street in Duluth’s East Hillside area. The two men knew each other before that night. According to the man’s statement, he put garbage in the back of Shockley’s vehicle. Reports describing the complaint identify the vehicle as a Lexus. The records do not explain what the garbage consisted of, how much there was or why it was placed inside the vehicle.

The man told police that Shockley became angry about the trash and threw it back toward him. He alleged that Shockley then produced a knife and stabbed him once in the upper chest. The injured man also told investigators that he struck Shockley several times during the encounter and that Shockley dropped the knife and left. That account is an allegation contained in charging material, not a finding by a judge or jury. The reports reviewed for this story do not say whether another person witnessed the entire confrontation, whether investigators recovered the knife or whether physical evidence from the garage was cited in the complaint.

The seriousness of the injury is central to the first-degree assault charge. Medical staff determined that the stab wound had caused the man’s lung to collapse, according to the charging accounts. He required treatment in intensive care after arriving at the hospital under his own power. A collapsed lung can occur after a penetrating chest injury allows air to enter the space around a lung, preventing it from expanding normally. The court reports, however, provide only limited medical information about this patient, and they do not disclose his long-term condition. The available record establishes that he survived and received intensive treatment after the Aug. 13 encounter.

The investigation moved from the hospital to an arrest on Aug. 19. That afternoon, according to the complaint, a Duluth police officer saw Shockley riding an electric bicycle along the 100 block of West First Street. The officer activated emergency lights and a siren and directed him to stop. Police alleged that Shockley initially turned and pedaled quickly in the other direction before eventually complying. He was then taken into custody. That encounter produced the fleeing charge, which is separate from the assault accusation tied to the garage confrontation six days earlier.

A search conducted after the arrest also led to the drug allegation. Police said they found 1.65 grams of a white, crystal-like substance in Shockley’s shorts. The substance produced a positive field test for methamphetamine, according to reports describing the complaint. Shockley was subsequently charged with fifth-degree possession of methamphetamine. The publicly reviewed material does not provide a later laboratory result, so the allegation remains based on the evidence described in the charging record. The drug and fleeing counts concern the Aug. 19 police encounter, while prosecutors tied the first-degree assault charge to the events of Aug. 13.

The separate dates matter because the criminal case joins allegations from two distinct episodes. The first is the garage dispute described by the injured man, culminating in the chest wound and his trip to the emergency room. The second is the police stop nearly a week later, when Shockley was located on the electric bicycle. Reports published in September said Shockley was held on $100,000 bond after his arrest. Those reports also listed a Nov. 6 court appearance. The available reporting reviewed for this article does not establish that Shockley has entered a plea or that a trial date has been set.

Several questions about the Aug. 13 confrontation remain unanswered in the public accounts. The reports do not include an interview in which Shockley responds to the injured man’s version of events. They do not say whether the knife was recovered, whether surveillance video existed near the garage or along the route to the hospital, or whether investigators obtained independent eyewitness testimony about the stabbing itself. They also do not disclose whether Shockley suffered injuries during the punches the other man said he threw. Those gaps do not erase the charges, but they mark the difference between the allegations supporting a criminal complaint and facts established later in court.

The hospital arrival remains one of the most striking pieces of the case because it provided investigators with an injured witness able to identify a suspected attacker and describe what he said had just happened. Despite suffering a wound serious enough to collapse a lung, the man made his way to the emergency department rather than arriving through a reported ambulance response to the garage. Police then received his account while medical workers treated the injury. That sequence is documented in the reports of the complaint, but the later course of the man’s recovery has not been publicly detailed.

The prosecution now centers on whether the evidence can establish the assault allegation and the two charges connected to Shockley’s arrest. A Nov. 6 court appearance was the next proceeding listed in the September reports reviewed for this story. No later publicly reported disposition was found before this update. Shockley is presumed innocent unless proven guilty, and unresolved details of the confrontation remain matters for the court process.

Author note: Last updated Oct. 21, 2026.