Police say surveillance footage helped them evaluate sharply different accounts of an attack that left a bicyclist with life-threatening injuries.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A police investigation into the stabbing of a 34-year-old man near Broadway Avenue turned heavily on surveillance video that authorities say supported the injured man’s account and led to attempted-murder and robbery charges against 42-year-old Amanda Faye Rupp.

The case began shortly after midnight Sept. 20, when security officers encountered the badly injured man near 47th Street and Broadway. Police said he had suffered a serious abdominal stab wound and extensive damage to his nose. He was taken to a hospital and underwent emergency treatment, including surgery to control internal bleeding and reconstructive surgery to his nose. Investigators later said the attack had started after the man’s bicycle developed a flat tire and he remained near a Walgreens while trying to deal with the problem. Rupp has been accused of confronting him there, but the allegations have not been proven in court.

The injured man told detectives that a woman approached him and asked about his bicycle. According to the arrest account, the encounter then changed quickly. He said the woman produced what he described as a small kitchen knife, tried to take his phone, demanded money and threatened to kill him. Police said the man reported being stabbed repeatedly before the confrontation shifted toward the bicycle itself. The victim’s identity has not been publicly established in the reports reviewed for this article. His account became one of several pieces of evidence investigators considered while deciding whether the episode was an assault, a robbery or a fight in which both people claimed to have been attacked.

Investigators did not rely solely on that statement. They reviewed surveillance recordings from businesses along the Broadway corridor and compared the images with witness accounts and later interviews. Police said the footage showed a struggle near the rear of 4715 Broadway Ave. and appeared to show Rupp standing over the injured man afterward. Authorities said she was later seen walking away carrying a knife, with blood visible on her arms. The recordings were not described as perfectly clear. One report citing the arrest document said the video was dark and pixelated, limiting investigators’ ability to determine every movement during the initial struggle.

What police said happened after that struggle became particularly important to their assessment of the competing stories. According to the affidavit as described in local reports, footage showed Rupp returning toward the man as he tried to leave with his bicycle. Investigators alleged that she struck him in the back of the head, kicked him and punched him while pulling at the bicycle. Police characterized that later conduct as evidence supporting the victim’s version of events. Law enforcement also alleged that she continued the confrontation after the man had already suffered the stab wound. Those conclusions remain allegations that prosecutors would have to establish through admissible evidence if the criminal case proceeds to trial.

Rupp gave investigators a substantially different explanation. She alleged that the man had taken $15 from her purse and portrayed herself as the person who had been wronged. Other reporting on the police account said she also claimed the man had offered his bicycle in exchange for sex and attacked her with a knife when she rejected him. Rupp admitted confronting the man and kicking him, according to the arrest account cited by WPBF, but police said the broader evidence did not support her assertion that he was the aggressor. The contrast between those statements and the surveillance record is central to the probable-cause narrative, though the final weight of the evidence is a matter for the court.

Police also gathered physical evidence from the area. Investigators said part of the victim’s nose was recovered at the scene, and reports describing the affidavit said a large amount of blood was found near where the confrontation occurred. The victim’s abdominal wound required a procedure to stop internal bleeding, while the injury to his nose required reconstructive surgery. Authorities have not publicly released a detailed update on his long-term recovery in the material reviewed for this article. The severity of those injuries is relevant to the aggravated-battery accusation because Florida law defines aggravated battery to include a battery that intentionally or knowingly causes great bodily harm, permanent disability or permanent disfigurement, or involves a deadly weapon.

The investigation also developed through witnesses who had seen the people involved before the violence. WPBF reported that security officers were initially told two women had tried to rob and assault the man. Other witnesses told investigators that the victim had been seen with two women before the attack and that the group had been asked to leave a nearby business. Publicly available accounts do not identify the second woman as a charged participant in the stabbing. Police ultimately focused the allegations described in the arrest affidavit on Rupp. Officers located her Sept. 22 near 49th Street and Broadway, about two days after the attack, according to local reporting.

Rupp was arrested on allegations that included attempted first-degree murder with a deadly weapon, robbery with a deadly weapon, aggravated battery causing bodily harm or disability and possession of drug paraphernalia, according to reports citing the West Palm Beach Police Department affidavit. The attempted-murder accusation is the most serious expression of investigators’ theory that the stabbing was not merely an accidental injury during a struggle. The charging decision does not establish guilt. Prosecutors would still have to prove the required elements beyond a reasonable doubt, and Rupp retains the right to challenge the victim’s statements, the interpretation of the surveillance recordings, the physical evidence and other parts of the state’s case.

The robbery count creates a separate question about property and force. Florida’s robbery law generally requires proof that property was taken, or that a taking was attempted, with the intent to deprive another person of it and with force, violence, assault or fear used in the course of that effort. Police allege that the confrontation involved attempts to take the man’s phone and later his bicycle. The affidavit’s description of Rupp pulling at the bicycle after the stabbing therefore serves a different purpose from the evidence offered in support of the attempted-murder count. Prosecutors are not required to prove every charged offense through the same act, and the public reports do not establish what evidence may ultimately be admitted.

The surveillance recordings may therefore become especially significant if the victim’s and Rupp’s conflicting accounts remain central as the case advances. Video can provide an independent record of movement and timing, but investigators themselves acknowledged limitations in the footage described by local reports. A dark or pixelated recording may support parts of a chronology without conclusively showing every action or explaining what occurred outside the camera’s view. Witness testimony, medical records, physical evidence and statements made during interviews could all bear on how prosecutors and defense attorneys interpret what the cameras captured. No public report reviewed for this article indicates that a judge or jury has made findings about those competing interpretations.

Currently, Rupp is being held in the Palm Beach County Jail without bond and had a court date scheduled for Oct. 22. A reliable public update establishing the outcome of that scheduled appearance was not found in the material reviewed through Nov. 8. The criminal allegations therefore remain unresolved, and Rupp is presumed innocent unless and until she is proven guilty in court. West Palm Beach police had described the investigation as continuing when the arrest was publicly reported.

Author note: Last updated November 8, 2026.