MURRYSVILLE, Pennsylvania: Police are still trying to determine why a 16-year-old boy stabbed 21 students and a security guard in the crowded halls of his suburban Pittsburgh high school before an assistant principal tackled him.
At least five students were critically wounded in the attack Wednesday, including a boy whose liver was pierced by a knife thrust that narrowly missed his heart and aorta, doctors said. Others also suffered deep abdominal puncture wounds.
The rampage — which came after decades in which US 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 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. He was jailed without bail, and authorities said he would be prosecuted as an adult.
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.
At the brief hearing, District Attorney John Peck said that after he was seized, Hribal made comments suggesting he wanted to die.
Defense attorney Patrick Thomassey described Hribal as a good student who got along with others, and asked for a psychiatric examination.
Thomassey told ABC’s Good Morning America on Thursday that any defense he offers would likely be based on Hribal’s mental health. He said he hoped to move the charges against the teenager to juvenile court, where he could be rehabilitated. If convicted as an adult, Hribal faces likely decades in prison.
Thomassey said Hribal is remorseful, though he acknowledged his client didn’t appear to appreciate the gravity of his actions. “At this point, he’s confused, scared and depressed. Over the next few days we’ll try to figure out what the heck happened here,” Thomassey said.



“I think he understands what he did. ... I don’t think he realizes how severely injured some of these people are.”
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 (24 kilometers) east of Pittsburgh.
It was over in about five minutes, during which the boy ran wildly down about 200 feet (60 meters) of hallway, slashing away with knives about 10 inches (254 millimeters) long, police said.
Assistant Principal Sam King finally tackled the boy and disarmed him, and a police officer who is regularly assigned to the school handcuffed him, police said.
King’s son told The Associated Press that his father was treated at a hospital, though authorities said he was not knifed.
In addition to the 22 stabbed or slashed, two people suffered other injuries, authorities said. The security guard, who was wounded after intervening early in the melee, was not seriously hurt.
“There are a number of heroes in this day. Many of them are students,” Gov. Tom Corbett said during a visit to the stricken town. “Students who stayed with their friends and didn’t leave their friends.”
While several bloody stabbing rampages at schools in China have made headlines in the past few years, schools in the US have concentrated their emergency preparations on shooting rampages.
Nevertheless, there have been at least two major stabbing attacks at US 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.