‘I’m not the person that did this’: Man convicted of Point Defiance Park stabbing gets 22 years
May 29, 2026, 2:59 PM | Updated: 3:32 pm
Nicholas Matthew appeared in court in May 2024. (Photo courtesy of KIRO 7)
(Photo courtesy of KIRO 7)
The man who stabbed a woman in Point Defiance Park in 2024 in Tacoma was sentenced to 22 years in prison Friday.
Last August, Nicholas Matthew was found guilty of first-degree attempted murder, with a deadly weapon sentencing enhancement, for attacking 34-year-old Victoria Nizzoli on a marked trail of Five-Mile Drive on the afternoon of February 10, 2024.
He was convicted by a jury of six men and six women just hours after deliberations, according to The Tacoma News Tribune.
“A lengthy prison sentence based on these facts …will protect the public,” the judge said. “As such, I am going to sentence you to the 240 months with an additional 24 months … for the deadly weapon enhancement.”
Matthew said he didn’t do it.
“It’s been a mistake,” Matthew said. “I’m not the person that did this.”
Matthew reportedly pinned Nizzoli to the ground and repeatedly stabbed her. Witnesses intervened, and Matthew ran from the scene toward the Owen Beach parking lot. After that, they lost sight of him.
“I begged him to let me go, that I could give him money, that I would give him anything he wanted if I could live,” Nizzoli said in a press conference. “That was when he made it verbally explicit that his intent was to kill me.”
Emergency management workers transported Nizzoli to the hospital with serious wounds.
Matthew arrested for Point Defiance stabbing
Law enforcement arrested Matthew in March 2024 after finding out he had fled to Atlanta, Georgia.
Detectives secured a confidential, attempted murder in the first-degree warrant with nationwide extradition and flew to Atlanta. When they arrived in Georgia, they found out Matthew was trying to leave the country.
Authorities then caught him in San Francisco. He was held in a California correctional facility before being extradited to Washington.
In May 2024, a judge found Matthew not competent to stand trial after his mother said he had bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, according to KIRO 7. He was ordered to undergo a 90-day treatment.
However, a competency evaluation subsequently determined he was fit to stand trial, KOMO News reported.
Frank Lenzi is the News Director for KIRO Newsradio. Read more of his stories here.
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