A fatal stabbing occurred Tuesday evening in the notoriously sketchy parking lot of the Castro Safeway shopping plaza.

The stabbing was reported at 8:26 p.m. Tuesday on the 2000 block of Market Street, during a typically bustling weekday evening in the Castro/Duboce Triangle area. As Bay Area News Group reports, the victim, who has not been publicly named, was treated at the scene by paramedics and later died at the hospital.

As KTVU reports via further clarification from the SFPD, the stabbing occurred in the Safeway parking lot — and neighbors told the station that the stabbing occurred near the far side of the shopping center where Jamba Juice is, and not in front of the grocery store.

The victim was reportedly a 40-year-old man.

This is the second widely reported incidence of violence in the Safeway plaza parking lot this year. A shooting that occurred there in February of this year resulted in an elderly woman being wounded while sitting in a restaurant across Market Street.

Frank Tizedes, president of the Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association, tells KTVU, regarding the stabbing, "I wasn't shocked, but I was disappointed. I want to know what's going on." Tizedes further relayed that he's been attacked three times on the street in the neighborhood, including a most recent attack in which a mentally ill individual allegedly bit him and broke his finger.

Former Planning commissioner and a former head of the neighborhood association Dennis Richards tells KTVU that he now carries a "civilian Taser" with him. And Richards said this latest incident is just the latest in an ongoing escalation of street violence in the area. "We feel like when we leave our house even during the day, we put our safety at risk," Richards tells the station. "It's just not acceptable, I mean this is our neighborhood."

No motive for the stabbing has been revealed by police, and no arrests have been made.

Photo: Giorgio Trovato