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Tag: knife attack
Community Holds Rally For School In Wake Of Knife Attack

Community Holds Rally For School In Wake Of Knife Attack

By Lexi Belculfine, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

MURRYSVILLE, Pa. — On Tuesday, Fatima Ahmad returned to Franklin Regional High School and found an unwelcome surprise.

The junior from Murrysville traveled familiar hallways to her locker, hoping to grab books so she could study before she and her classmates returned to school Wednesday.

When the metal locker door swung open, there it was, she told more than a thousand people at a community rally Tuesday night.

Her lunch, packed for last Wednesday, sat there, uneaten and decaying.

She threw it out, but the symbolism didn’t escape her, she said, as a cold wind whipped a light layer of snow off the pavilion roof behind her.

“We should all open ourselves up, like I did to my locker,” Fatima said. “We shouldn’t let the bad things — like my lunch — stew inside of us and rot.”

Twenty-one students and a security guard were injured last week during a knife attack at the school. Student Alex Hribal, 16, has been charged as an adult in the attack.

Numerous churches and community groups gathered more than 1,250 white tapered candles in just 24 hours so the community could rally to send students, staff and teachers back to school today “with love” in Murrysville Community Park as twilight faded to darkness Tuesday. Snow started falling halfway through the gathering, as the temperature continued falling further below freezing.

Community members, parents, alumni and students stood on a grassy hill in the park, bundled in puffy winter coats, Franklin Regional letterman jackets, scarves and gloves, holding each other tight. First responders wore safety green jackets, and toddlers sat in folding chairs, only their eyes and the tops of their hats peeking out from under thick blankets.

The group was subdued, laughing only timidly at the jokes of emcee Bill Rehkopf, a KDKA radio personality and Franklin Regional alumnus.

On-duty Monroeville police Officer James Markel took a break from his shift to address the group, “You have a lot to be thankful for. You went through a tragedy and held your heads high.”

He sang “You Raise Me Up,” and his voice echoed off the hills behind the group, filling the valley.

Murrysville police Chief Tom Seefeld told parents, “The real heroes were your children and the staff in your school.”

The loudest cheers of the night were for the first responders until the mother and brothers of student Jared Boger, who is still in University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Presbyterian hospital following the attack, took the microphone.

“Thank you for the outpouring of love and support,” Janet Boger said. “He’s doing well. As long as they can control the pain, he’s goofy, in a good mood.

“He will recover from this,” she said.

As she and two of her sons walked away, they shook the hands of school administrators and first responders.

Fatima and other Franklin Regional students also took the microphone, to reflect and look forward. All of them expressed sentiments of thanks — thanks to teachers and first responders, thanks to each other.

By 8:45 p.m., candles were lit, and slowly a dull glow burst from the crowd. Flames flickered in the frigid wind, and people turned to each other, re-lighting flames that had extinguished, as students and alumni sang the district’s alma mater.

“… We will honor and defend thee, Franklin High School Blue and Gold.”

AFP Photo/Ross Mantle

Teen Suspect In PA School Stabbings Said To Be Shy, Quiet

Teen Suspect In PA School Stabbings Said To Be Shy, Quiet

By Robert Zullo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

MURRYSVILLE, PA — He always seemed to be “the shy kid in the corner,” a classmate said.

Hours after a startling and savage attack Wednesday morning that left 21 students and a security guard wounded, that was the picture that began to emerge of 16-year-old Alex Hribal, a sophomore at Franklin Regional Senior High School. Armed with two 8-inch knives, he is accused of stabbing and slashing his way through a crowded hallway in an assault that was labeled “bizarre” by both a prosecutor and his own lawyer.

Interviews with nearly two dozen students Wednesday evening at various vigils organized by churches yielded precious little background about Hribal, who was arraigned on charges of attempted homicide, aggravated assault and weapon possession. Four of his alleged victims remained in critical condition Wednesday night.

Many students said they did not know him. Others, like sophomore Anissa Park, who knew Hribal from elementary school but hadn’t talked with him for some time, invariably used the words “shy” and “quiet” to describe him. Some said he was involved in athletics, including street hockey, track and tennis, though The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette could not confirm those details Wednesday night.

Another student who knew Hribal, though he spoke on condition of anonymity, said he was stunned by the attack.

“I know him pretty well,” the boy said, adding that Hribal’s interests swung toward the usual for a teenage boy, including hockey and video games. “I’ve never seen any anger from him, ever. … He never seemed like someone who would do anything violent. He never seems very upset or any of that.”

Though his parents could not be reached Wednesday, Hribal’s lawyer, Patrick Thomassey said he had spoken to them about an hour before the teen’s arraignment.

“They did not foresee this coming. They expressed absolute horror,” Thomassey said, adding that the family’s thoughts were with the victims.

Thomassey said the teenager was not a loner nor was he aware of any instances of bullying that would have provoked the attack.

“He’s scared,” Thomassey said. “He’s a young kid. He’s 16, looking like he’s 12. This is all still new to him.”

Thomassey said Alex is a B-plus student from a stable home, describing his family as “like Ozzie and Harriet.”

“They have dinner together every night,” the attorney said, though he would not provide details of his discussions with his client.

“I’m not sure he knows what he did, quite frankly,” Thomassey said. “Something happened here. There’s an issue that maybe nobody knew about.”

District Attorney John Peck said during the brief hearing that Hribal made some statements after school officials tackled him that indicated he wanted to die.

Dan McCool said his 16-year-old daughter, Trinity, was in the hallway as the attack unfolded.

“They just know who he is. They don’t know necessarily much about him. They just say he was kind of quiet and kept to himself,” McCool said, adding that the terror of what had happened didn’t hit him until he went to pick his daughter up at the school, where he was struck by the degree of order and efficiency. “Any time something happens I just try to remain calm. … When I went down to the school to pick her up after she talked to the FBI, I was breaking up then.”

Though she would not discuss the Franklin Regional case specifically, Mary Margaret Kerr, chair of administrative and policy studies and a professor of psychology in education and psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, said it can be difficult for schools to predict violent behavior in students.

She said standard psychological tests haven’t been successful in predicting targeted violence in schools, adding that many school attackers had no histories of mental disorders.

Kerr, author of “Strategies for Addressing Behavioral Problems in the Classroom,” referenced a report by the U.S. Secret Service and Department of Education on school shootings and school-based attacks dating back to 1974.

It found that school attacks are rarely impulsive acts, but are typically planned in advance.

“The study findings also revealed that there is no ‘profile’ of a school shooter; instead, the students who carried out the attacks differed from one another in numerous ways,” according to a synopsis of the report on the Secret Service website.

The study said, however, that most attackers had engaged in prior behavior that concerned at least one adult, and often several adults.

AFP Photo/Scott Olson

After Pennsylvania School Stabbing, Community, Students Seek Solace

After Pennsylvania School Stabbing, Community, Students Seek Solace

By Richard Simon and Alana Semuels, Los Angeles Times

MURRYSVILLE, PA — Students who witnessed Wednesday’s stabbing rampage at Franklin Regional High School felt as if they had survived a horror movie.

Some attended an evening prayer service for at least 19 students and two adults who were wounded in the morning attack. Alex Hribal, 16, has been charged as an adult with four counts of attempted homicide, 21 counts of aggravated assault and one count of bringing a weapon on school property, said his attorney, Patrick Thomassey. Hribal is being held without bail.

Brenda Gossar, a 10th-grader, was standing at her locker when she turned around and saw a young man stabbing people, she said. One of her friends was stabbed in the back, and Gossar feared she might be next.

“I just ran,” she said.

Other friends were wounded too.

“I thought it was a dream,” Gossar said.

Later, she visited her injured friends in the hospital, where one was in critical condition.

The suspect, Hribal, had been bullied, she said.

“People picked on him,” she said. “I think he targeted people who were bullying him, who he didn’t like. He looked scared, and he looked angry.”

Hribal was quiet, she said, and he had ignored the bullying until Wednesday morning.

On Wednesday night, Gossar had to excuse herself from a prayer service at Newlonsburg Presbyterian Church, which is about a block from the school, to meet with a grief counselor because she’s having trouble dealing with the violence, she said.

She isn’t the only one. “It will be hard for us to walk in the hallways and not think of it, but we’re going to pull through,” she said.

The school is temporarily closed while authorities investigate. Ministers and grief counselors have been made available to the students.

Some of the stabbing victims and their friends joined hundreds of others at another prayer service down the road, at Cornerstone Ministries. Many wore the yellow and blue attire of the Franklin Regional High School Panthers.

Nate Scimio was there, surrounded by his friends, after posting a selfie of himself in a hospital gown and a bandaged arm. He declined to speak to the media.

Sydney Contraguero, a senior, said she was in an upstairs hallway when the fire alarm sounded. She followed Jared Boger, a fellow student, down the stairs, and saw another student coming toward them. At first she thought the student, Hribal, was going to hug Boger, she said. But when Hribal ran away, Boger was bleeding.

“I didn’t even know until I saw blood on the ground,” she said. “It all happened so quick.”

Outside, she saw a girl with a neck wound and a boy with a leg injury, she said.

Boger was still unconscious late Wednesday night, according to a Twitter feed belonging to his brother, Carter.

Hribal’s father appeared briefly outside the family’s home in Heritage Estates, a planned community of spacious homes on hills, many with basketball hoops and hockey nets out back.

“My prayers go out to everyone,” he said, adding that he hoped the victims all recovered.

“Kids are resilient,” said Pastor Brian Smith of Cornerstone Ministries, who visited the school to talk with students after the stabbing. “There was just a sense of a heaviness in the air,” he said.

“We saw an act of evil that took place today, but although we saw an act of evil, we saw many, many acts of good,” said another pastor, Dan Hertzler, who directs student ministries at Cornerstone. He counseled many of the students after the stabbings.

The community as well as the students sought solace Wednesday night.

Joanne Witkowski attended the service at the Newlonsburg Presbyterian Church. Her nephew Brandon Brown, 14, was seriously wounded, even though “he did not know the suspect.”

Her nephew wasn’t even aware he was stabbed, Witkowski said. “He thought that he was punched and then he looked down and saw his clothes were bloody and his shirt was ripped.”

Brown was airlifted to a hospital, where he initially was in critical condition, she said, but had improved to stable by nightfall.

The knife “just missed” his liver but punctured a lung, she said.

Witkowski said her nephew did not know Hribal. “He did not know the suspect — never hurt or harmed the suspect.”

She called the attack “senseless” and said people “need to begin to recognize what the warning signs are.”

Sarah Jean Thompson and her husband, Paul, have lived in the community for 40 years. The retirees attended the Presbyterian service, which was themed “God’s Heart Breaks,” to show support for the community.

“Just like everybody else is saying, this doesn’t happen in Franklin Regional,” Sarah Jean Thompson said.

AFP Photo/Ross Mantle

Knife Attack Leaves At Least Four Dead At China Market

Knife Attack Leaves At Least Four Dead At China Market

By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times

BEIJING — At least four people were reported dead after knife-wielding assailants stabbed and slashed passers-by Friday morning in Changsha, in China’s south-central Hunan province.

Witnesses described the assailants as Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking minority from northwestern China’s Xinjiang region. Militants from that region were implicated in a knifing rampage March 1 that left 33 people dead at a train station in Kunming, China.

Witnesses who posted accounts on social media sites said it was unclear whether the knifing was a premeditated attack or a dispute among vendors at the fruit and vegetable market in the Wujialing district of Changsha. Some witnesses said one of the assailants was a vendor who sold Uighur-style flatbread from a stall at the market and who got into a fight with another man.

Among the four dead was one of the assailants, while another suspect was under arrest, according to early reports by Chinese state media.

The incident took place about 10 a.m., according to reports.

The dead included an elderly vendor and a man who witnesses said was slashed and stabbed repeatedly as he lay bleeding on the ground. Photographs posted on social media sites showed a man bleeding profusely as he lay face down next to a table of winter jackets. Another showed a mustachioed man handcuffed by police.

The harrowing March 1 knife attack at a train station in Kunming left 33 dead and 130 injured. Four assailants were killed by police during the attack, and one was taken into custody. Three more were reportedly arrested days later. Chinese authorities identified the leader of the March 1 attack as Abdurehim Kurban, but it was unclear whether he was among those detained.

There have been more than 200 incidents of violence in the last 12 months in Xinjiang, which some Uighurs refer to as East Turkestan, according to Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

akasped via flickr