GIRL HAILED AS HERO
At Forbes Regional Medical Center, where some of the most severely wounded victims of Wednesday’s stabbing rampage were treated, Dr. Mark Rubino in a press conference singled out for praise a girl with “an amazing amount of composure” who applied pressure to a schoolmate’s wounds and probably kept the victim from bleeding to death. Gracey Evans, a junior, said she was in a school hallway when a friend was stabbed in the back and another student was stabbed in the stomach. “My friend was on his stomach, and the other kid who was severely injured was told to sit up. I knew that wasn’t right,” she said. “I said to a few students, we need pressure on this wound, and they gave me some paper towels, and I held pressure on that wound for about 10 minutes.” She was taken with her injured friends to the hospital, where social workers attended to her. “They told me I was a real hero,” she said, but added that she remained traumatized: “I’m still shaking.”
Pittsburg Post-Gazette and The Associated Press
Flailing away with two kitchen knives, a 16-year-old boy with a “blank expression” stabbed and slashed 21 students and a security guard in the crowded halls of his suburban Pittsburgh high school Wednesday before an assistant principal tackled him, authorities said.
At least five students were critically wounded, including a boy who had to be placed on a ventilator after a knife pierced his liver, missing his heart by only millimeters, doctors said.
Doctors said they expect all the victims to survive, though some suffered deep abdominal puncture wounds.
The rampage — which came after decades in which U.S. schools geared much of their emergency planning toward mass shootings, not stabbings — set off a screaming stampede, left blood on the floor and walls, and brought teachers rushing to help the victims.
The motive was under investigation.
The suspect, whom police identified as Alex Hriba, was taken into custody and treated for a minor hand wound. Late Wednesday, he went before a judge in a hospital gown and shackles to be charged. Sheriff Jonathan Held described him as quiet and said the boy had not been talking to authorities.
The attack unfolded in the morning just minutes before the start of classes at 1,200-student Franklin Regional High School, in an upper-middle-class area 15 miles east of Pittsburgh. It was over in about five minutes, during which the boy ran wildly down about 200 feet of hallway, slashing away with knives about 8 to 10 inches long, police said.
Nate Moore, 15, said he saw the boy tackle and stab a freshman. Moore said he about to try to intervene when Hriba got up and slashed his face, opening a wound that required 11 stitches.
“It was really fast. It felt like he hit me with a wet rag because I felt the blood splash on my face,” he said.
Hriba “had the same expression on his face that he has every day, which was the freakiest part,” Moore said. “He wasn’t saying anything. He didn’t have any anger on his face. It was just a blank expression.”
Assistant Principal Sam King finally tackled the boy and disarmed him, and a Murrysville police officer who is regularly assigned to the school handcuffed him, police said.
King’s son said his father was treated at a hospital, though authorities have said he did not suffer any knife wounds.
“He says he’s OK. He’s a tough cookie and sometimes hides things, but I believe he’s OK,” Zack King said, adding, “I’m proud of him.”
“There are a number of heroes in this day. Many of them are students,” Gov. Tom Corbett said in a visit to the stricken town. “Students who stayed with their friends and didn’t leave their friends.”
As for what set off the attack, Murrysville Police Chief Thomas Seefeld said investigators were looking into reports of a threatening phone call between Hriba and another student the night before. Seefeld didn’t specify whether Hriba received or made the call.
While several bloody stabbing rampages at schools in China have made headlines in the past few years, schools in the U.S. have concentrated their emergency preparations on shooting rampages.
Nevertheless, there have been at least two major stabbing attacks at U.S. schools over the past year, one at a community college in Texas last April that wounded at least 14 people, and another, also in Texas, that killed a 17-year-old student and injured three others at a high school in September.
On Wednesday, Mia Meixner, 16, said the rampage touched off a “stampede of kids” yelling, “Run! Get out of here! Someone has a knife!”
Meixner and Moore called Hriba a shy boy who largely kept to himself, but they said he was not an outcast and they saw no indication he might be violent.
“He was never mean to anyone, and I never saw people be mean to him,” Meixner said. “I never saw him with a particular group of friends.”
About five minutes elapsed between the time the campus police officer summoned help over the radio at 7:13 a.m. and the boy was disarmed, Seefeld, the police chief, said.
Someone, possibly a student, pulled a fire alarm during the attack, Seefeld said. Although that created chaos, he said, it emptied out the school more quickly, and “that was a good thing that that was done.”
Public safety and school officials said an emergency plan for the school worked as well as could be expected. The district conducted an emergency exercise three months ago and a full-scale drill about a year ago.
“We haven’t lost a life, and I think that’s what we have to keep in mind,” said county public safety spokesman Dan Stevens.
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