Student charged in Texas college stabbing attack
Updated at 10:49 p.m. ET
CYPRESS, Texas A 20-year-old student went on a building-to-building stabbing attack at a Texas community college Tuesday, wounding at least 14 people many in the face and neck before being subdued and arrested, authorities said Tuesday.
The Harris County Sheriff's Office said in a statement that Dylan Quick had been planning the attack at the Lone Star College System's campus in Cypress for some time and had fantasies of stabbing people to death since he was in elementary school.
Quick, who was charged with three counts of aggravated assault, used a razor-type knife, and piece of the blade was found in at least one victim, the sheriff's office said. Broken blade pieces also were found in the area where the stabbing occurred, and the handle was discovered in a backpack that Quick was carrying when he was arrested.
Authorities were seen entering Quick's parents' home in a middle-class neighborhood of Houston on Tuesday night. No one answered the door or the phone at the red brick home, where two vehicles were parked in the driveway, including a Honda Accord with a license plate that said "DYLAN." It was not immediately known if Quick had an attorney.
The attack about 11:20 a.m. on the Lone Star Community College System's campus in Cypress sent at least 12 people to hospitals, while several others refused treatment at the scene, according to Cy-Fair Volunteer Fire Department spokesman Robert Rasa. Two people remained in critical condition Tuesday evening at Memorial Hermann Texas Trauma Institute, spokeswoman Alex Rodriguez said.
Diante Cotton, 20, said he was sitting in a cafeteria with some friends when a girl clutching her neck walked in, yelling, "He's stabbing people! He's stabbing people!"
Cotton said he could not see the girl's injuries, but when he and his friends went outside, they saw a half-dozen people with injuries to their faces and necks being loaded into ambulances and medical helicopters.
Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia said it was not immediately clear what type of weapon was used, but there were indications when calls came in to the department that "students or faculty were actively responding to work to subdue this individual."
"So we're proud of those folks, but we're glad no one else is injured any more severely than they are," Garcia said.
Witnesses told the police department a man was "on the loose" and attacking people. After reviewing video evidence, police have determined the rest of the student body is safe and that there are no other suspects.
Lone Star officials initially urged people on campus, about 25 miles northwest of downtown Houston, to take shelter and be on alert for a second suspect. But Gilliland said a short time later that authorities believed just one person was responsible. He did not say whether the suspect is a student.
"It was the same suspect going from building to building," Gilliland said.
Gilliland said the attacker is believed to have had some type of knife or a pencil, but authorities could not immediately confirm the weapon used.
Student Teaundrae Perryman said he was in class when he received a text message from a friend and went outside to see a young woman being loaded into an ambulance with what appeared to be stab wounds to either her neck or head. He said he didn't receive an email alert from the college until 11:56 a.m.
"I was concerned but I wasn't afraid because I was with a large group of people," the 21-year-old said, later adding, "The police got to the scene very quickly."
The four people flown by helicopter and two others with moderate injuries were taken to Memorial Hermann Texas Trauma Institute.
One student said she learned one of her classmates was stabbed after leaving the school's Health Science Center building.
"I called to check on another classmate who was still inside the building and she said the classroom was on lockdown and she said one of the classmates had been stabbed," said Margo Shimfarr-Evans told CBS Houston. "It happened in the hallway."
Courtland Sedlachek, 18, was in class when his phone started buzzing along with the phones of everyone else in class. The room was temporarily locked down, but students were let out and off campus a short time later, in what Sedlachek described as an orderly evacuation.
He described his reaction as a "little bit of nervousness."
The attack came three months after a different Lone Star campus was the site of a shooting in which two people were hurt. The suspected gunman in that incident is charged with aggravated assault.