Police say a man and a woman are in custody after a Dartmouth man was stabbed to death early Thursday morning.

Officers responded to a report of an altercation in the 100 block of Portland Street in Dartmouth around 2:14 a.m.

“Once we arrived at the scene we located a 59-year-old man unconscious on the sidewalk, the victim of a stabbing,” said Halifax Regional Police spokesman Sgt. Pierre Bourdages.

“He was later pronounced deceased at the scene.”

The victim has been identified as Bradley Wayne Knoll.

Police say they believe the stabbing happened on the sidewalk and is not connected to any businesses in the area.

A woman was arrested in Dartmouth Thursday morning while a man was arrested Thursday afternoon in Halifax.

“We arrested the woman early this morning in Dartmouth, around 4:30 a.m., and we arrested the man around 2 p.m. here in Halifax,” Bourdages said.

Police say they remain in custody where they are being questioned. There is no word on charges at this time.

Leslie MacMichael, who lives in a nearby apartment, says she heard the events unfolding.

“A woman and a man's voice. They were brawling in her apartment, and then out in the hallway, and then I heard someone go down the stairs loudly,” she said.

She says she looked out her window after things had gone quiet.

“I saw him spread out on the sidewalk. I couldn't see his head, because there is an awning over it, but I could see his body. His pants were down around his ankles,” she said.

Jason Puddister, who lives in an apartment building in the area, says he heard the man’s cries for help.

“There’s a lot of noise out here in the nighttime so typically I don’t wake up, but I did wake up last night,” said Puddister.

“I heard a man ask for help and ask for people to call 911 and within probably a minute of being awake, two minutes, the ambulances started rolling up and the cops started rolling up and he was quiet.”

He says he was shocked and saddened this morning when he learned the man had died from his injuries.

“I woke up this morning feeling pretty weird when I found out he had died because he must of, like I heard it happen, so it was pretty weird,” said Puddister.

“It’s pretty sad, you know, waking up in your bed and someone, something like that has happened so close to you. It’s kind of rough. It’s sad, I don’t know why things have to escalate to that level, you know. If you have an altercation with somebody why can’t you just go home to your beds?”

Local residents say the neighbourhood has been mostly quiet in recent years, but they say there have been a couple of recent altercations at the building that was at the centre of Thursday’s police investigation.

The area of Portland Street between King Street, Queen Street and Wentworth Street was blocked off Thursday morning while police investigated the incident.

A forensic unit stayed on the scene until early afternoon.

Police say the investigation is ongoing and they are asking anyone with information to contact them.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Ron Shaw