It was just before the start of class and the hallways were packed as usual, with students at their lockers or chatting with friends.
Nate Moore was walking to homeroom, book in hand, when a classmate he knew to be quiet and unassuming tackled a freshman boy a few feet in front of him. Moore thought it was the start of a fistfight and went to break it up.
But 16-year-old Alex Hribal wasn’t throwing punches — he was stabbing his victim in the belly, Moore said. The suspect got up and slashed Moore’s face, then took off down the hall, where authorities said he stabbed and slashed other students in attacks that injured 21 students and a security guard — and might have been even worse but for the “heroes” who Pennsylvania’s governor said helped prevent further injury or loss of life.
An assistant principal tackled and subdued Hribal, who was charged Wednesday night with four counts of attempted homicide and 21 counts of aggravated assault and jailed without bail. Authorities said he would be prosecuted as an adult.
Hribal’s lawyer said Thursday he wants a mental health expert to evaluate the boy, and that Hribal’s parents were “horrified” by the attack.
In an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” defense attorney Patrick Thomassey acknowledged that Hribal stabbed the victims but said he didn’t know what motivated him.
He said the teen is remorseful but didn’t appear to appreciate the gravity of his actions.
He had no psychiatric or disciplinary problems, and his family described him as a good student who mingled well with others, Thomassey said.
“His parents are devastated and send their condolences to everybody involved,” Thomassey said. “They can’t figure it out.”
The lawyer told the Pittsburg Post-Gazette that the family is “like Ozzie and Harriet” and that Hribal, a B-plus student, comes from a very stable home.
“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.”
The suspect’s motive remained a mystery.
“He wasn’t saying anything,” Moore recalled hours after the rampage. “He didn’t have any anger on his face. It was just a blank expression.”
At a brief hearing Wednesday night, District Attorney John Peck said that after he was taken into custody, Hribal made comments suggesting he wanted to die.
A 17-year-old boy was the most seriously injured, with a single 4-centimeter (1 1/2-inch) stab wound that reached through to his spine.
The boy was speaking when he arrived at the hospital and has undergone surgery to stop the bleeding, officials said. He will undergo more surgeries in the days ahead.
The knife missed the boy’s heart and aorta by millimeters, said Dr. Louis Alarcon, director of trauma surgery at UPMC Presbyterian, where the boy was being treated.
He was on breathing machines and sedated, Alarcon said at a news conference.
Doctors are concerned about additional blood clotting and bleeding, the Los Angeles Times reported, but “we are very optimistic that he is going to make it,” Alarcon said.
“Apparently it was a large knife of some sort, because it was a large injury to his abdominal wall and went through his liver, diaphragm and major blood vessels,” said Alarcon. “Fortunately for this young man, the knife missed his heart and his aorta.”
One of the students stabbed took a selfie at the hospital:
The rampage comes after decades in which US schools have focused their emergency preparedness on mass shootings, not stabbings.
While knife attacks at schools are not unusual, they’re most often limited to a single victim, said Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers.
Nevertheless, there have been at least two major stabbing attacks at US schools over the past year, the first 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 last September.
The attack Wednesday unfolded shortly after 7 a.m., a few 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. By Thursday morning, the school was no longer being treated as a crime scene, according to police and school officials, who said they expected it to reopen Monday.
Mia Meixner, 16, said the freshman boy who was tackled tried to fight back, then, when his assailant got off him, stood up and lifted his shirt to reveal a midsection covered in blood.
“He had his shirt pulled up and he was screaming, ‘Help! Help!’” said another witness, Michael Float, 18. “He had a stab wound right at the top right of his stomach, blood pouring down.”
As students rushed to the boy’s aid, the attacker slashed Moore before taking off around a bend.
“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,” said Moore, whose gashed right cheek required 11 stitches.
The boy ran down about 200 feet of hallway, slashing and stabbing other students with kitchen knives about 8 to 10 inches long, police said. The assault touched off a “stampede of kids” yelling, “Run! Get out of here! Someone has a knife!” according to Meixner.
Assistant Principal Sam King heard the commotion and found a chaotic scene in the blood-soaked hall.
“I’ve been stabbed,” he heard a student say.
King then saw Hribal stab a security guard, who leaned against the wall, bleeding from his stomach, according to a police affidavit. King tackled Hribal and kept him on the floor until a school police officer handcuffed him.
The rampage lasted about five minutes.
“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 others.
Looking for a motive, Murrysville Police Chief Thomas Seefeld said investigators were checking reports of a threatening phone call between Hribal and another student the night before. He didn’t say whether the suspect received or made the call.
FBI now on the scene at the alleged stabber’s house pic.twitter.com/RQNynEaIP9
— Raf Sanchez (@rafsanchez) April 9, 2014
The FBI went to the boy’s house, and local media reports said agents removed at least one computer along with other items.
Meixner and Moore called the attacker a shy and quiet boy who largely kept to himself, but they said he was not an outcast and they saw no indication before the attack that 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.”
During the attack, the boy had a “blank look,” she said. “He was just kind of looking like he always does, not smiling, not scowling or frowning.”