Police search motive of Pittsburgh-area school stabbing rampage

    What motivated a stabbing rampage at a Pennsylvania high school remains a mystery, with the teenage suspect’s attorney calling him a good student who got along with others.

    Sixteen-year-old Alex Hribal faces dozens of charges, including four counts of attempted homicide, in the stabbing attack that injured 21 students and a security guard at Franklin Regional High School Murrysville, outside of Pittsburgh. He’s jailed without bail.

    Police say Hribal used two kitchen knives to attack students up and down a hallway. At least five students were critically wounded, including a boy who was on a ventilator after a knife pierced his liver.

    Students say Hribal was quiet and shy and largely kept to himself.

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    Defense attorney Patrick Thomassey has asked for a psychiatric examination, saying the boy was “like a deer in the headlights” hours after the attack. He says he believes police are just as puzzled as Alex Hribal’s family is about why he would pull two knives out of a kitchen drawer yesterday, take them to school and start stabbing other students. Hospital officials say 10 boys remain hospitalized, including three in critical condition.

    School stabbing victim: ‘Will I die?’

    One of the victims of a knife attack at a high school near Pittsburgh says he was terrified he might die when he realized he had been stabbedin the back.

    Sixteen-year-old Brett Hurt appeared at a hospital news conference Thursday, a day after authorities say fellow student Alex Hribal either stabbed or slashed 21 students and a security guard at Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville.

    “What was going through my mind?” Hurt said. “Will I survive or will I die.”

    Hurt says he doesn’t think he could return to school anytime soon. He says, “I might freeze.”

    Hurt says the whole attack was a blur.

    He says he met the suspect a couple of times but didn’t really know him.

    Sounding the alarm

    Several Franklin students have credited classmate Nate Scimio, a sophomore, with standing to defend another student and pulling the fire alarm. He posted this image to Instagram after receiving treatment at the hospital.

     

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