LOS ANGELES (AP) – A man on Friday stabbed and seriously injured a doctor and two nurses in the emergency room of a Southern California hospital. He stayed inside while police tried to persuade him to surrender, authorities said.
The man walked into Encino Hospital Medical Center in the San Fernando Valley shortly before 4 p.m., Los Angeles police officer Drake Madison said.
Fire officials said three victims were taken to a trauma center in critical condition, although later reports said they were stable.
The man remained in hospital for more than two hours after the attack and a SWAT team was called in, police said.
Benjamin Roman, a sonographer, told KNBC-TV that he had seen the man before the stabbing, who had a dog with him and who may have been high on the drugs because he looked anxious and was wet with sweat.
After the hospital issued an “internal triage” code, Roman said he saw a doctor and a nurse who had been stabbed.
“The doctor looked (like) she was in pain,” he said. “There was a lot of blood and it looked like… he might have her belly.”
The attack comes just two days after a gunman killed four people and then himself at a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The assailant entered a building on the campus of Saint Francis Hospital with little difficulty just hours after purchasing an AR-style rifle, authorities said.
The man killed his surgeon and three other people in a medical office. He blamed the doctor for his persistent pain after recent back surgery.
