NMSU Player Stabbed In Las Cruces Nightclub

Police said an NMSU basketball player was stabbed at a local Las Cruces club during the weekend.

Police identified the New Mexico State University athlete as Makhtar “Pape” Diop. He has been playing on the basketball team since 2008.

Police said Diop was involved in a fight at a popular Las Cruces club, Graham Central Station, located at 505 S. Main. Police said an officer found Diop somewhere in the east side of the parking lot outside the club, with his shirt wrapped around his severely bleeding stomach.

Diop told police that he was just having a good time on the dance floor when he was attacked and stabbed.

“The young man who was stabbed was dancing with maybe a woman that the suspect didn’t want him dancing with,” Las Cruces Police Department spokesman Dan Trujillo said.

According to the police report, Diop told the officer he was dancing with a girl when he bumped into somebody.

He continued on to tell the same officer that, moments later, he was struck in the head with a bottle and cut, before a bouncer got him out of the bar.

Police said Diop suffered multiple cuts to his stomach, where he was stabbed with the glass from the broken bottle.

“He was very cut up; his stomach area had multiple cuts. From what I understand it was possibly a glass bottle that was broken that was used,” Trujillo said. “You can imagine it was very jagged and doing a lot of damage.”

The officer described Diop’s cut as “bad enough that parts of his internal organs, including his intestines, were hanging out of his stomach.”

Police also said pieces of the shattered glass from the broken bottle hit a woman in the eye. Police said the severely injured woman was simply an innocent bystander to the attack.

“Very innocent, completely innocent bystander, when a glass was broken over this young man’s head, parts of that glass, the shards of it, flew and struck her in her left eye and her left eye was severely damaged as a result of that,” Trujillo said.

Diop has undergone multiple surgeries but is expected to recover, Trujillo said.

The individuals responsible are described as two Hispanic men, possibly bald and with acne scarring on their faces, according to the police report.

Anyone with information is asked to call police.