Tag Archives: Stabbing

Four dead, more than 20 hurt when driver ploughs into Australian pedestrians

Police block off street where truck attack took place

MELBOURNE (Reuters) – A man deliberately drove into pedestrians, killing four and injuring more than 20, in the center of Australia’s second largest city of Melbourne on Friday, but police said the incident was not terrorism-related.

Police eventually rammed the car and shot the 26-year-old driver in the arm, before dragging him from the vehicle and arresting him. Police said the man had a history of family violence and was wanted over a stabbing earlier in the day.

Pursued by police cars, the man had been seen driving erratically before speeding into a pedestrian mall, ploughing into people, police said. A shop video showed several people diving into a convenience store as the car raced along the footpath.

“We witnessed about half a dozen people that ricocheted off the car one way or another. I saw one person fly up almost roof level of the car as they got thrown up against one of the retail stores,” Sharn Baylis, 46, told Reuters by telephone.

“You could hear the gasping and the screaming from people, then you just started hearing the screams and the crying as it sunk in,” she said.

Baylis said she rushed across tram tracks and with other bystanders and gave cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) first aid to a badly hurt man who had been run over.

“I think it was pretty much in vain at that point. The seriousness of his injuries, he was probably the worst I saw.”

One of the dead was a child. Four children, including a three-month-old baby, were taken to Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital, said a hospital spokesman.

“We’re not regarding this as a terrorism-related incident,” Victoria state police commissioner Graham Ashton told reporters on Friday.

Police had earlier chased the driver, who was wanted over a domestic assault and driving offences, Ashton said.

‘GUNS DRAWN’

Video from a witness showed a maroon colored car driving around in circles in an intersection outside Flinders St railway station in the city’s central business district, with the driver shouting at people and hanging his arm out the window.

Two people approached the car, apparently trying to stop it before it drove off with police chasing. (For a graphic, click http://tmsnrt.rs/2jTj2Y9)

Witness Maria Kitjapanon told Melbourne’s Age newspaper that police eventually rammed the car.

“There were probably 10 police surrounding that guy’s car, with guns drawn, and they fired into the car. Then they dragged someone out via the passengers side, then all 10 of them sat on top of him,” she said.

Melbourne is hosting the Australian Open tennis grand slam and is packed with thousands of tourists, only a few blocks from where the incident occurred. Police said the tennis tournament continued as normal.

Australia, a staunch U.S. ally, has been on heightened alert for attacks by home-grown radicals since 2014 and authorities have said they have thwarted a number of plots. There have been several “lone wolf” assaults, including a 2014 cafe siege in Sydney that left two hostages and the gunman dead.

Friday’s incident initially raised fears about the possibility of another attack.

Last year, in attacks claimed by Islamic State, trucks were driven into crowded pedestrian precincts in separate incidents in Nice and Berlin, killing scores.

(Reporting by Tom Westbrook and Jamie Freed in Sydney, Sonali Paul in Melbourne; Writing by Michael Perry; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

At least 10 injured in Ohio State University attack

Ohio State Seal

(Reuters) – At least 10 people were injured, one critically, at Ohio State University, in an attack that was carried out by an assailant who used a knife and a vehicle to attack people , local officials said.

The assailant was shot and killed by police but not before he had struck his victims with the vehicle and stabbed them, the university said in a statement.

Ohio State University said it had lifted a shelter-in-place order shortly before noon local time, adding that the campus was secure.

Ohio State University police and local law enforcement continued their investigation at the campus, the college said.

The university campus remained open, although classes were canceled for the rest of the day.

Rebecca Diehm, a spokeswoman for the Columbus Fire Department, said 10 people were injured and transported to local hospitals, with one person in critical condition.

Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center treated five people with non-life threatening injuries and all were in stable condition, spokeswoman Amanda Harper said.

Two people were treated at Grant Medical Center and two others at Riverside Medical Center, said Mark Hopkins, a spokesman for Ohio Health, which runs a state hospital network. All four were in stable condition with non-life threatening injuries, according to Hopkins, who could not confirm the nature of the injuries.

“The Columbus City Council stands united with Ohio State University,” said Council President Zach Klein. “We are continually thinking about and praying for all those involved and affected by this senseless act of violence.”

“Ohio’s thoughts and prayers go out to the Ohio State community,” Ohio Governor John Kasich said in a statement. “Be safe, listen to first responders.”

(Reporting by Kim Palmer in Cleveland and Laila Kearney and Franklin Paul in New York, Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Six Utah high school students stabbed, including teen suspect

Orem, Utah

(Reuters) – Five students were stabbed inside a Utah high school boys’ locker room on Tuesday before the 16-year-old male suspect turned the weapon on himself, school officials said.

The incident at Mountain View High School in Orem, Utah, occurred just before 8 a.m. MT (1500 GMT), and prompted a brief lockdown of the school, the Alpine School District said in a statement.

The stabbing suspect was apprehended by a school resource officer before he and the victims were transported to local hospitals, the school district said.

Their injuries range from minor to critical, it added.

Police did not release additional details about the circumstances surrounding the attack or what might have motivated it.

Students will be released to their parents later in the morning, police said.

(Reporting by Laila Kearney; Editing by Alan Crosby)

U.S. woman killed in London knife attack, no evidence of terrorism

Police officers stand near a forensics tent after a knife attack in Russell Square in London

By Costas Pitas and Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) – A U.S. woman was killed and five other people injured by a man with suspected mental health issues who went on a rampage with a knife in central London, but police said there was no evidence that the attack was terrorism related.

Armed police were called at 10:33 p.m. (2133 GMT) after a Norwegian man of Somali origin with a knife started to attack people in London’s Russell Square, an elegant park near the site of a 2005 suicide bombing.

The victim, a U.S. citizen in her 60s, was treated at the scene but pronounced dead a short time later.

Another woman and four men were treated in hospital, though three of them were later discharged. Nationals from Australia, Britain, Israel and the United States were among those hurt.

“All of the work we have done so far increasingly points to this tragic incident as having been triggered by mental health issues,” said London Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley.

“We believe this was a spontaneous attack and that the victims were selected at random,” said Rowley, who is Britain’s most senior anti-terrorism officer.

“So far we have found no evidence of radicalization that would suggest that the man in our custody is in any way motivated by terrorism,” said Rowley. Initially he said that terrorism was a line of inquiry.

Police, who arrived within six minutes of being called, used a Taser electric shock gun while detaining the 19-year-old suspect. He was later formally arrested on suspicion of murder.

Police cordoned off the southern part of the square, which sits at the heart of London’s university area and is close to landmarks such as the British Museum, for several hours as forensics officers examined the attack scene.

Later, workmen hosed blood off the pavement.

“SEVERE THREAT”

London’s Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim mayor of a major Western capital, called for vigilance and urged Londoners to report anything suspicious to the police‎, who increased their presence in the capital.

“The safety of all Londoners is my number one priority and my heart goes out to the victims of the incident in Russell Square and their loved ones,” he said.

Just hours before the Russell Square attack, London’s police chief said that he would deploy an additional 600 armed officers across the capital to protect against attacks.

London counter-terrorism police chiefs have previously warned that Islamic State was seeking to radicalize vulnerable people with mental health issues to carry out attacks. In some operations, police commanders have taken advice from specialist psychologists.

Islamist militants hit London with coordinated suicide bombings on July 7, 2005, killing 52 people. One of the bombs detonated on a bus close to Russell Square.

Since then, dozens of plots have been foiled and there have been smaller-scale attacks, such as the beheading of an off-duty soldier by militant Islamists in a London street in May 2013.

A man who attacked passengers at a London underground train station in December was jailed for life earlier this month. The judge said the attacker was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the offense but may have been motivated by events in Syria.

(Additional reporting by Kylie MacLellan; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Jon Boyle)

Knife attacker in Japan kills 19 in their sleep at disabled center

Police seen in front of disability center where mass stabbing took place

By Elaine Lies and Kwiyeon Ha

SAGAMIHARA, Japan (Reuters) – A knife-wielding man broke into a facility for the disabled in a small town near Tokyo early on Tuesday and killed 19 patients as they slept, authorities said, Japan’s worst mass killing since World War Two.

At least 25 other residents were wounded in the attack at the Tsukui Yamayuri-En facility for mentally and physically disabled in Sagamihara town, about 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Tokyo.

“This is a very heart-wrenching and shocking incident in which many innocent people became victims,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a regular news conference in Tokyo.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe later told a gathering in Tokyo: “The lives of many innocent people were taken away and I am greatly shocked. We will make every effort to discover the facts and prevent a reoccurance.”

The suspect was a 26-year-old former employee of the facility who gave himself up to police. The man, Satoshi Uematsu, said in letters he wrote in February that he could “obliterate 470 disabled people”, Kyodo news agency reported.

He said he would kill 260 severely disabled people at two areas in the facility during a night shift, and would not hurt employees.

“My goal is a world in which the severely disabled can be euthanized, with their guardians’ consent, if they are unable to live at home and be active in society,” Uematsu wrote in the two letters given to the speaker of the lower house of parliament, Kyodo reported.

Uematsu was committed to hospital after he expressed a “willingness to kill severely disabled people”, an official in Sagamihara told Reuters. He was freed on March 2 after a doctor deemed he had improved, the official said.

Uematsu lived near the facility, and a neighbor described him as a polite, young man who always greeted him with a smile.

“It would be easier to understand if there had been a warning but there were no signs,” said Akihiro Hasegawa, 73. “We didn’t know the darkness of his heart.”

The suspect apparently began changing about five months ago, said Yuji Kuroiwa, the governor of Kanagawa prefecture, where the facility is located.

“You could say there were warning signs, but it’s difficult to say if this could have been prevented,” he told reporters.

“This was not an impulsive crime … He went in the dark of the night, opened one door at a time, and stabbed sleeping people one by one,” Kuroiwa said. “I just can’t believe the cruelty of this crime. We need to prevent this from ever happening again.”

Staff at the facility called police at 2.30 a.m. local time (1730 GMT Monday) with reports of a man armed with a knife on the grounds, media reports said. The man wore a black T-shirt and trousers, the reports said.

The 3-hectare (7.6 acre) facility was established by the local government. Surrounded by tree-covered mountains and on the banks of the Sagami River, it cares for people with a wide range of disabilities.

The facility’s website said the center had a maximum capacity of 160 people, including staff.

“IT MAKES YOU WEEP”

Japan has one of the lowest crime rates in the world and residents of Sagamihara said they were in shock. The last murder in the area was 10 years ago.

“This is a peaceful, quiet town so I never thought such an incident would happen here,” said Oshikazu Shimo, one of many residents of the town who gathered near the facility.

Taxi driver Susumu Fujimura said of the attacker: “He said ‘we should get rid of disabled people’ but he’s the worthless one.”

“That kind of person can’t defend themselves,” Fujimura said, referring to the victims. “That’s why so many died. It makes you weep to think of somebody just murdering them.”

The dead ranged in age from 19 to 70 and included nine males and 10 females, Kyodo said.

Police had recovered a bag with several knives, at least one stained with blood, a Kanagawa prefecture official said.

At least 29 emergency squads responded to the attack, Kyodo reported, with those wounded taken to at least six hospitals in the western Tokyo area.

Such mass killings are extremely rare in Japan and typically involve stabbings. Japan has strict gun laws and possession of firearms by the public is rare.

Eight children were stabbed to death at their school in Osaka by a former janitor in 2001. Seven people died in 2008 when a man drove a truck into a crowd and began stabbing people in Tokyo’s popular electronics and “anime” district of Akihabara.

A revision to Japan’s Swords and Firearms Control Law was introduced in 2009 in the wake of that attack, banning the possession of double-edged knives and further tightening gun-ownership rules.

Members of a doomsday cult killed 12 people and made thousands ill in 1995 in simultaneous attacks with sarin nerve gas on five Tokyo rush-hour subway trains.

(Additional reporting by Kaori Kaneko, Minami Funakoshi, Linda Sieg, Chang-Ran Kim, Olivier Fabre and William Mallard in TOKYO, Eric Beech in WASHINGTON and Jon Herskovitz in AUSTIN; Writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan; Editing by Sandra Maler, Grant McCool and Paul Tait)

Israeli teenager stabbed in West Bank a U.S. Citizen

sraeli soldiers gather near the scene where a Palestinian fatally stabbed a 13-year-old girl inside her home, at the entrance to

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A 13-year-old Israeli girl fatally stabbed in her bedroom in the occupied West Bank on Thursday was a U.S. citizen, the State Department said.

The girl, Hallel Yaffa Ariel, was attacked after an assailant climbed a security fence and entered a home in the settlement of Kiryat Arba.

“We have now confirmed that she is a U.S. citizen,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said at a news briefing.

(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Alan Crosby)

A Teacher at a Jewish School Stabbed in France by ISIS Supporters

On Wednesday night, a teacher at a Jewish school in the southern French city of Marseille was stabbed by three people who yelled anti-Semitic and pro-ISIS obscenities. The teacher survived the attack.

Reuters reports that the three attackers were on two scooters and approached the man in the street. One of them wore an Islamic State t-shirt while another showed pictures of Mohamed Merah – a man who killed 7 people in France in 2012 before being shot by police – on his phone to the victim. They stabbed the teacher three times in the arm and leg.

“The three people insulted, threatened and then stabbed their victim in the arm and leg. They were interrupted by the arrival of a car and fled,” Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin told Reuters.

BBC News reports that police are looking for the attackers.

Since the attacks in Paris last Friday that led to the deaths of 129 people, France has been in a state of emergency.