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Showing posts with label self defense/crime prevention/security. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self defense/crime prevention/security. Show all posts
A
16-year-old Pennsylvania boy was charged Wednesday evening with two
dozen felony counts after 20 students and a security guard were stabbed
or slashed at a suburban Pittsburgh high school.
The
boy, identified as Alex Hribal, a sophomore at Franklin Senior Regional
High School in Murrysville, was held without bail on four counts of
attempted homicide, 21 counts of aggravated assault and a misdemeanor
count of carrying a prohibited weapon.
At
least four people remained in intensive care with life-threatening
injuries after the rampage Wednesday morning at Franklin Senior Regional
High School in the town of Murrysville.
Hribal was remanded to juvenile detention pending a preliminary hearing April 30 in Westmoreland County Magisterial Court.
Prosecutors
told Judge Charles R. Conway that Hribal "randomly and
indiscriminately" wielded his knives in a hallway at the school and
indicated that "he wanted to die."
They said it was unclear whether he was competent to stand trial.
Attorneys
for Hribal — who sat head-down in court in a hospital gown, bearing
numerous bandages and stitches with his hands and feet shackled — asked
for a psychiatric evaluation.
School Stabbing Spree: 20 Hurt in Pittsburgh-Area Bloodbath
By Erin McClam
A
student flashing two knives went on a stabbing rampage through the
classrooms and halls of a high school outside Pittsburgh on Wednesday
morning, authorities said. At least 19 students and a security guard
were hurt, some with life-threatening injuries.
The
suspect, a 16-year-old sophomore, was in custody and being questioned
by police, authorities said. His motive was unclear, said Dan Stevens, a
Westmoreland County emergency management spokesman.
The first photo of the suspect emerged several hours after the mayhem. NBC News is blurring the face of the teen in the photo, from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, because of his age. He had not been charged or identified.
Guy Wathen / Tribune-Review
A
suspect in the Franklin Regional High School stabbings leaves the
Murrysville Police Station on Wednesday. Image blurred to protect
identity.
The
student was “flashing two knives around” as he moved through the
classrooms and a first-floor hallway, said Thomas Seefeld, the
Murrysville police chief. A principal tackled the stabber, he said. The
security guard suffered a stomach wound.
The
attack happened at Franklin Regional High School, in the suburb of
Murrysville, just after doors opened for the day. A student described panic in the halls.
Published: 18:24 EST, 9 April 2014 | Updated: 18:27 EST, 9 April 2014
MURRYSVILLE,
Pa. (AP) — 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. At
least five students were critically wounded, including a boy whose
liver was pierced by a knife thrust that narrowly missed his heart and
aorta, doctors said. 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.
A
man and woman walk away from Franklin Regional High School after more
then a dozen students were stabbed by a knife wielding suspect at the
school on Wednesday, April 9, 2014, in Murrysville, Pa., near
Pittsburgh. The suspect, a male student, was taken into custody and is
being questioned. (AP Photo/Tribune Review, Brian F. Henry) PITTSBURGH
OUT
Police shed little light on the motive. The
suspect, Alex Hribal, was taken into custody and treated for a minor
hand wound, then was brought into court in shackles and a hospital gown
and charged with four counts of attempted homicide and 21 counts of
aggravated assault. Authorities said he would be prosecuted as an adult. 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. He said he
going to try to break it up when the boy 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. It spurted up on my forehead," he said. The
attacker "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. Doctors said they expect all the victims to survive, despite deep abdominal puncture wounds in some cases. King's
son told The Associated Press that 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. He added: "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." He also commended cafeteria workers, teachers and teacher's aides who put themselves at risk to help during the attack. As
for what set off the attack, Murrysville Police Chief Thomas Seefeld
said investigators were looking into reports of a threatening phone call
between the suspect and another student the night before. Seefeld
didn't specify whether the suspect received or made the call. The
FBI joined the investigation and went to the boy's house, where
authorities said they planned to confiscate and search his computer. 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!" The boy had a "blank look," she said. "He was just kind of looking like he always does, not smiling, not scowling or frowning." Meixner
and Moore called the attacker a shy boy who largely kept to himself,
but they said he was not an outcast and they had no reason to think 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." Michael
Float, 18, said he had just gotten to school when he saw "blood all
over the floor" and smeared on the wall near the main entrance. Then he
saw a wounded student. "He
had his shirt pulled up and he was screaming, 'Help! Help!'" Float
said. "He had a stab wound right at the top right of his stomach, blood
pouring down." Float said he saw a teacher applying pressure to the wound of another student. The security guard was wounded after intervening early in the melee, police said. He was treated and released. 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, the
police chief said. Someone,
possibly a student, pulled a fire alarm during the attack, Seefeld
said. Although that created chaos, the police chief said, it emptied out
the school more quickly, and "that was a good thing that that was
done." Also,
a girl with "an amazing amount of composure" applied pressure to a
schoolmate's wounds and probably kept the victim from bleeding to death,
said Dr. Mark Rubino at Forbes Regional Medical Center. Public
safety and school officials said an emergency plan 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. ___ Associated
Press writers Mike Rubinkam in Allentown and Jesse Washington in
Murrysville, Pa., and AP news researchers Judith Ausuebel and Barbara
Sambriski contributed to this report.
A
police officer guards the entrance Heritage Elementary School as
students are dismissed after more than a dozen students were stabbed by a
knife wielding suspect at nearby Franklin Regional High School on
Wednesday, April 9, 2014, in Murrysville, Pa., near Pittsburgh. The
suspect, a male student, was taken into custody and is being questioned.
(AP Photo/Tribune Review, Sean Stipp) PITTSBURGH OUT
Students
walk past a row of buses as they leave the campus of the Franklin
Regional School District after more then a dozen students were stabbed
by a knife wielding suspect at nearby Franklin Regional High School on
Wednesday, April 9, 2014, in Murrysville, Pa., near Pittsburgh. The
suspect, a male student, was taken into custody and is being questioned.
(AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
Students
are escorted from the campus of the Franklin Regional School District
after more then a dozen students were stabbed by a knife wielding
suspect at nearby Franklin Regional High School on Wednesday, April 9,
2014, in Murrysville, Pa., near Pittsburgh. The suspect, a male student,
was taken into custody and is being questioned. (AP Photo/Gene J.
Puskar)
Westmoreland
County emergency management spokesman Dan Stevens, left, looks on as
Franklin Regional School District Superintendent Gennaro Piraino pauses
while addressing the media during a news conference outside of Franklin
Regional High School on Wednesday, April 9, 2014.on Wednesday, April 9,
2014, in Murrysville, Pa., near Pittsburgh. More than a dozen students
were stabbed by a knife wielding suspect at the school. The suspect, a
male student, was taken into custody and is being questioned. (AP
Photo/Tribune Review, Brian F. Henry) PITTSBURGH OUT
A
parent holds hands with a Franklin Regional High School while picking
up the student after more than a dozen students were stabbed by a knife
wielding suspect at the school on Wednesday, April 9, 2014, in
Murrysville, Pa., near Pittsburgh. The suspect, a male student, was
taken into custody and is being questioned. (AP Photo/Tribune Review,
Sean Stipp) PITTSBURGH OUT
Self-defence forces
gather near Buenavista in Michoacan, Mexico, part of a growing movement
of militias taking on the drug cartels. Photograph: ZUMA/REX
With their scuffed shoes, baggy
trousers and single shot hunting guns, the eight men preparing to patrol
their hillside barrio in the southern Mexican town of Tixtla hardly
looked like a disciplined military force. But this motley collection of
construction workers and shopkeepers claim to have protected their
community from Mexico's violent drug cartels in a way the police and military have been unable – or unwilling – to do.
"Since
we got organised, the hit men don't dare come in here," said one young
member of the group, which had gathered at dusk on the town's basketball
court, before heading out on patrol. "Extortions, kidnappings and
disappearances are right down."
Over the past year, vigilante
groups like this have sprung up in towns and villages across Mexico,
especially in the Pacific coast states of Guerrero and Michoacán. They
make no pretence to be interrupting drug trafficking itself but they do
claim to have restored a degree of tranquillity to daily life.
In a
country where the police are commonly felt to commit more crime than
they prevent, the militias have won significant popular support, but
they have also prompted fears that the appearance of more armed groups
can only provoke more violence.
Tensions exploded this weekend
when a march by self-defence groups triggered a gun-battle between
gunmen and federal forces in the city of Apatzingán, followed by attacks
on power stations that left hundreds of thousands without electricity.
Nearly
seven years after the government launched a military-led crackdown on
the cartels, the weekend's events have caused many to ask if the new
government of President Enrique Peña Nieto is presiding over the first
rumblings of an undeclared civil war.
"Perhaps the closest antecedent is the civil wars of central America," said an editorial posted on the widely-read news site Sin Embargo.
The
weekend's violence began on Saturday when a group of militiamen marched
on the city, saying they were responding to calls for support by
residents there who want to set up their own self-defence group. Similar
groups claim to have forced the brutal Knights Templar cartel out of
smaller towns in the region, but Apatzingán, capital of the Tierra Caliente region, has remained largely in the hands of the drug barons.
Troops
allowed the marchers into the city after they had disarmed, but when
they gathered in the central square, they came under attack from gunmen
on the rooftops – including some who were reportedly stationed in the
cathedral belltower. A video shows people running for cover as federal police officers appear to return fire at the attackers.
At
the end of the day, the marchers withdrew after the army agreed to step
up patrols and include observers from the self-defence groups. But the
movement's leader, José Mirales, warned reporters that the fight was not
over. "We are going to make sure that organised crime is expelled from
Apatzingán," he said. "They will try to respond."
That
response came just hours later, when, shortly after midnight, nine
electricity substations were firebombed in a string of almost
simultaneous attacks. More than 400,000 people were left without
electricity. At least four petrol stations were also torched.
In a
statement, Mexico's interior ministry promised that: "The actions of
the criminals will not stop the actions of the government to protect the
population."
But while the government claimed order had been
restored to Aptazingán, the tension continued into Sunday when a second
group of civilians marched on the local army base. The Knights Templar
were widely believed to be behind this second march that demanded
federal forces withdraw their protection from the self-defence groups.
Also on Sunday, five bodies were reportedly found on the outskirts of
the city, all wearing t-shirts identifying them as members of the
self-defence groups.
By GUSTAVO RUIZ and MARK STEVENSON Associated Press
Clashes in which self-described "self-defense" forces sought to oust the
Knights Templar drug cartel from the western Mexico state of Michoacan
left at least five men dead and hundreds of thousands of people without
electricity.
The weekend confrontations followed a daring march by a self-defense
force into the city of Apatzingan, the central stronghold of the
pseudo-religious Knights Templar cartel that for years has dominated
Michoacan, a state that sends a steady stream of avocados and migrants
to the United States.
State Interior Secretary Jaime Mares said soldiers and federal police
had taken over security in Apatzingan following the clashes.
Since rising up in February against systematic extortion by the Knights
Templar, residents of a half dozen towns that formed self-defense
patrols have lived without access to Apatzingan, a commercial and road
hub that is home to the region's main hospital and markets.
Self-defense leaders said they finally grew tired of the cartel blocking
services and commerce in an attempt to strangle their uprising and
showed up Friday on Apatzingan's outskirts, armed and ready to
"liberate" the city. They were turned back by soldiers who said they
couldn't enter with weapons.
A convoy of hundreds of unarmed self-defense patrol members returned on
Saturday and successfully entered the city, where they were met by
gunfire, presumably from the Knights Templar.
(David
Goldman/ Associated Press ) - Shanique Worthey, right, is embraced by
her mother Daphne Morris, while waiting to be reunited with her son
five-year-old son Skyler Worthey as students from Ronald E. McNair
Discovery Learning Academy are picked up by loved ones in a Walmart
parking lot after they were evacuated when a gunman entered the school,
Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2013, in Decatur, Ga.
By Associated Press, Published: August 20 | Updated: Wednesday, August 21, 4:48 PM
LITHONIA,
Ga. — A woman whose family once took in the suspect in an Atlanta-area
school shooting said Wednesday that he was mentally ill but never
violent in the past.Natasha Knotts told The Associated Press that
Michael Brandon Hill lived with her and her husband for several months
in his late teens. She says she served as a mother figure for Hill in
after he started coming to the small church where she and her husband
are pastors.
Two people who encountered a man accused of opening fire inside an Atlanta school said he told them he was off his medication.
Also
on Wednesday, police gave more details about the previous day’s ordeal
and what led up to it. Before going to the school, investigators say
that Hill took a photo of himself with an AK 47-style rifle and packed
up nearly 500 rounds of ammunition — enough to shoot more than half the
school’s students.Police said Hill, 20, got the gun from an
acquaintance, but it’s not clear if he stole it or had permission to
take it.No one was injured, but the suspect exchanged gunfire with
police who surrounded Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in
Decatur. The school’s 870 students in pre-kindergarten through fifth
grade were evacuated.“We have to make a reasonable assumption he was
there to do harm to someone,” said DeKalb County Police Chief Cedric L.
Alexander.Knotts said Hill called her sister Tuesday afternoon before
the shooting and said he had a rifle but didn’t say what he was planning
to do. She said she believes that Hill acted out as a plea for
help.“This is something that’s totally out of his character. This is not
him. This is not the Mike that I know. For anyone that knew Mike, this
was a total devastation,” she said in an interview at her home in
Lithonia.Though there is no blood or legal connection between them,
Knotts said she considers Hill like a son.“He was part of our
family,” Knotts said of the roughly six months that Hill stayed with
them several years ago. Her family was aware that “he had a mental
disorder” before he moved in, but she said he was loving and quiet and
never displayed any anger or violent tendencies.
He didn’t work,
didn’t seem to have any friends and hardly ever spoke about his family
or his past, Knotts said. Hill told her that his birth mother was dead
and that he didn’t know his father. He also has brothers.
She kept
in touch after he moved out and said he’d recently been living with
another couple who belonged to the church. Knotts last saw Hill about a
month ago and he seemed fine.
Hill held one or two staff members
in the front office captive for a time, the police chief said, making
one of them call a local TV station. At some point, he fired into the
floor of the school office. As officers swarmed the campus outside, he
shot at them at least a half a dozen times with an assault rifle from
inside the school and they returned fire, police said. Police came into
the school office, and Hill surrendered.
Hill is charged with
aggravated assault on a police officer, terroristic threats and
possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Police declined to discuss
what he told them when he was questioned.
Posted: 06/27/2013 05:28:05 PM MDT Updated: 06/28/2013 12:10:45 AM MDT
By Ally Marotti The Denver Post
The
steeple of the Hope Evangelical Lutheran Church in Westcliffe is framed
in front of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range. (Denver Post file)
For some, bearing arms is as patriotic as the Fourth of July.
But
on the eve of Colorado's new gun laws, the small town of Westcliffe is
deeply divided over whether one political group should carry unloaded
weapons in the town's beloved Independence Day parade.
The Custer
County Chamber of Commerce, the parade's longtime sponsor, canceled this
year's mile-long march through town after the Southern Colorado Patriots Clubannounced it would be carrying guns.
The Tea Party group's recruiting flier,
encouraging fellow Patriots to show up "and make a statement that we
still believe in our Constitution" with unloaded rifles, "especially the
evil black ones," slung over the shoulder, sparked political
controversy.
A petition to stop the group from carrying guns was
circulated. Arguments were had — at town board meetings, among chamber
members, on street corners.
The Town of Westcliffe saved the holiday, picking up sponsorship of the parade, but the rift remains.
"It
has polarized this community in a week," said chamber president Donna
Hood, who abstained from voting to cancel the parade. "I'm sure safety
was an interest with everybody, but I don't really believe that the Tea
Partyers were gonna draw attention to themselves by shooting people
going down our small town road."
The Patriots Club has marched in
past parades carrying weapons, although the guns were sometimes
concealed, said club member and Westcliffe town trustee Joe Cascarelli .
But this year is different.
Keith Srakocic / AP 
Guy Wathen / Tribune-Review
