School Stabbing Suspect Used ‘Ordinary Kitchen Knives’

The high school student charged with stabbing 22 people at a Pennsylvania school on Wednesday used two “ordinary kitchen knives,” a local prosecutor said Thursday.

The suspect, 16-year-old Alex Hribal, was charged as an adult on Wednesday with four counts of attempted homicide and 21 other counts, and was being held without bail in a juvenile detention center Thursday. Police say he stabbed 21 other students and a security guard at the school outside Pittsburgh.

Westmoreland County District Attorney John Peck did not say whether the kitchen knives, described by police as being 8 to 10 inches long, came from the suspect’s home, the Associated Press reports. But he said it’s unlikely anyone else will be held criminally responsible for the student bringing the weapons to school because such common items don’t need to be specially stored under the law.

Many of the victims were hospitalized and several suffered life-threatening wounds, though all are expected to survive.

Brett Hurt, a student who was stabbed in the back, said during a news conference from a hospital on Thursday that he was walking down the hallway with a friend, Gracie Evans, when the assailant ran by and stabbed him. “Everyone started running in different directions,” he said.

Evans applied pressure on his back to stop the bleeding. “She saved my life,” Hurt said.

Mark Drear, the vice president of a security company with personnel at the school, said Wednesday on CNN that the suspect “was just running down the hall stabbing kids as they were going by.”

Police have not given a motive for the attack.