Javier Garcia, left and Camron Torres.

Around 9:30 p.m. March 30, Javier Garcia, 16, and his friend, 14-year-old Camron Torres, were on their way to pick up pizza near Central Avenue in the city of Dunkirk when they ran into another 16-year-old.

In an unplanned fight that ensued, Garcia was reportedly stabbed a total of three times as well as slashed across his chest by a knife he didn’t know the other youth was carrying.

With quick-thinking reflexes, Torres stayed by his friend afterward and took him to the nearest safe place he could find — the Dunkirk Police Department. By this point, Garcia had almost lost a liter of blood.

“He was stabbed and wanted to run home and he said, ‘No we have to get you somewhere else,’ ” Jeanette Delgado, the aunt of Garcia, told the OBSERVER. “So he assisted my nephew to the police station and stayed with him. I’ll be honest, if he hadn’t reacted quickly and gotten him to the police station, he would have died because he lost a whole liter of blood.”

Delgado believes she knows the motive behind the incident.

“We all live in the same house and my nephew was just angry that this boy kept beating up his cousin and wanted to fight him,” Delgado said. “It was the first time my nephew ever proceeded to fight and he was planning on fighting with just fists, not being stabbed almost to death. My nephew stopped fighting the kid because he saw blood and wasn’t sure who it was at this point and didn’t want to hurt the kid, but he was being stabbed the whole time,”

Delgado said Torres is experiencing flashbacks and nightmares from the incident and blames himself for what happened.

“Camron thought smart and took him to the police station, got all of the cops the information that they needed, went through everything that happened,” Delgado shared. “To me, he’s a hero because a lot of people would have just ran off. They would have just left him, and Camron just took charge and made sure that my nephew got to safety. And I tell him that a lot of people wouldn’t have done that, worried for themselves and not wanting to deal with the police.”

Garcia, who was transported by helicopter to the hospital that night, came home from Monday. He is still experiencing a lot of pain, but is on the mend. He suffered a punctured lung that collapsed, a lacerated liver and a lacerated spleen, Delgado said.

“I’m very thankful that Camron was able to think clearly and handle the situation so well because I really feel that if he wasn’t there then my nephew would have died,” Delgado said. “To me he’ll always be a hero.”

According to Dunkirk police, the 16-year-old suspect has been charged with first-degree assault and petitioned to the Youth Part of Chautauqua County Court.