By The Opinion
08 Nov 2024, 11:46 PM EST
Five people were stabbed in an apparently random attack in Seattle, Washington state on Friday, and police are investigating whether the suspect who was detained may have stabbed five other people since Thursday morning.
“This incident was apparently the work of a single individual who over a 38-hour period committed random assaults,” police officer Eric Barden said at the scene Friday.
Two people were in critical condition after the attack in the city’s Chinatown International District, police and a Harborview Medical Center spokesperson said Friday.
Five other people were also stabbed in separate incidents in the same area. since Thursday morning. The attacks are similar in their randomness and description of the attacker, said Seattle Police Deputy Chief Eric Barden.
“It is certainly plausible that the suspect involved in today’s stabbing is the same suspect involved in the five previous incidents, but the investigation is ongoing,” Barden said.
The suspect, who police said they were working to identify Friday, was arrested just up the hill where the attacks occurred, Barden said. He will be booked into an assault investigation, police said.
A gun was found near him, and a knife was also left on one of the victims who was taken to the hospital.
Four people had been hospitalized in critical condition. after Friday’s stabbings, but by afternoon two were in critical condition, one was in serious condition and one was in satisfactory condition, a hospital spokesman said. A fifth stabbing victim was treated at the scene, police said.
In the other stabbings, a 52-year-old woman was stabbed multiple times around 1:30 a.m. Thursday, and four other people were stabbed in separate attacks between then and Friday’s mass stabbing, Barden said.
“The arbitrary nature of these assaults makes it likely that they are similar,” Barden said.
One of the five previous stabbings involved a robbery in which a cellphone was stolen, but the others were random, he said. None of the victims have died.
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