Patient Who Helped Nurses During Attack Reacts To Surveillance Video
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – Surveillance video shows metro nurses scrambling to get away from a man wielding a metal bar.
A patient, 68-year-old Charles Logan, first swings a bar through the nurse's station.
When those nurses start to run, the man runs after them, still swinging.
The attack happened early Sunday morning at St. John's Hospital in Maplewood.
WCCO walked through the video with the patient police believe may have gotten the man to stop.
The 50 seconds of surveillance video may be silent, but Adam Linn will never forget the sounds.
"With all those girls yelling, it was just a lot of screaming," Linn said.
Linn had just had his appendix removed at St. John's. He slept just feet from the nurse's station where Logan began his attack, swinging a three-foot metal bar Logan had ripped from his bed at four unsuspecting nurses who struggled to get away.
Another camera captured the women trying to shut the door to get away, but it was too late.
"Took a lookout my door and ran like hell," Linn said.
Eight seconds later, Linn, the man in the T-shirt and a security guard by trade, chased after Logan.
It took another nurse a moment to unlock the door to let Linn through.
"That was the probably hardest thing to know that he's right there. And I'm stuck," Linn said.
One nurse was already hurt in the hallway.
The video stops before the rampage is over. Before Linn gets through to shout at Logan and chase him out.
Two nurses remain hospitalized, one with a punctured lung and another with a broken wrist. Crisis counselors are working with the entire staff.
When Linn left the hospital this week, nurses lined the hallway to clap as he left but he says they deserve the real praise.
"They are there to help us and they were the ones that needed help," Linn said.
Logan died shortly after the attack. Maplewood Police used a Taser on him but one of the probes didn't make contact.
The medical examiner is still investigating why Logan died. He'd been at St. John's for four days before the attack with paranoia. His family said he had no history of violence.