Stabbing Victim Files Lawsuit Against Hribal, His Parents, Franklin Regional
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MURRYSVILLE, Pa. (KDKA) - New details are emerging about the terror Alex Hribal inflicted on his fellow classmates during an April 2014 rampage inside Franklin Regional High School. Hribal stabbed 20 classmates and a security guard.
The information comes from a lawsuit filed by one of the victims, student Gregory Keener, who was 15 at the time of the attack. The suit names Hribal, his parents Harold and Tina, the Franklin Regional School District, and the district's then-security company, Capital Asset Protection, Inc. The suit asks for compensatory and punitive damages.
The suit describes in detail how close Keener came to dying in the stabbing attack. It says Keener was at his locker around 7 a.m. when Hribal came running at him and stabbed him in the abdomen with one of two 12-inch knives taken from his parents' home. The suit says Keener fell to the ground, laid in the hallway in excruciating pain, and then managed to make his way into a storage closet. There, the lawsuit says, he continued to bleed and his internal organs began to protrude from the knife wound.
The suit says Keener was originally tended to by an EMT, who then left him alone for approximately 25 minutes while he went to tend to other victims. Only when a Forbes Hospital trauma doctor arrived, the suit says, was Keener's condition recognized as critical. According to the lawsuit, the doctor stated that Keener's "only chance of survival was to get him to the nearest hospital with an operating room and blood."
The lawsuit says it took four surgeons four hours, and more than 40 units of blood to stabilize Keener's condition and repair damage to his liver, gall bladder and major blood vessels. Keener has since undergone two additional surgeries, and says in the lawsuit that he has lasting physical and emotional scars.
The lawsuit claims Hribal's parents knew or should have known that their son was mentally ill and a danger to others, and failed to stop the attack or warn the school district. The Hribals denied knowing anything about their son's troubles.
"He was never an angry kid," said Harold Hribal during an exclusive interview with KDKA's Marty Griffin in February.
Harold Hribal said that only after the attack did he and his wife learn their son had been bullied and was suffering from depression and suicidal.
"He was always so good," Tina Hribal said. "He was suffering in silence. I wish he would have had an outburst so we knew."
The Hribals had no response to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges that Franklin Regional School District officials were aware of Hribal's "serious mental illness and propensity for violence toward other students prior to the attack," but failed to take any action.
The suit also says the district and its then-security company failed to provide adequate security, calling a security guard's presence at the school "window dressing," and calling the lone, unarmed guard "grossly unqualified, ill-equipped and physically incapable of deterring or stopping the attack, or any other legitimate safety threat to students."
The suit also says the district failed to develop and implement adequate safety procedures in the event of an emergency like the stabbings, or if they did have one, failed to follow it
