Updated (9:15pmEDT): Spree-stabbing at UT-Austin.  Suspect in custody. 

It was initially reported as a machete attack, but the latest reports say Bowie knife, which would seem to fit the picture above and the eyewitness descriptions.  Didn’t the perp understand that it is not legal to carry a Bowie knife in Texas?  Or that it is against the law to kill people? 

Rachael Prichett, a UT freshman, had just left her last class of the day when she walked by the gym. 

“I heard a couple people scream,” she recalled about an hour later. “ I thought they were joking with each other, until I turned around and saw a guy … holding a small machete-type thing.” 

Prichett saw the attacker walk up behind another man, grab his shoulder and stab him in the back.  She said that attack happened so close to her that she could have reached out and touched the victim. 

“Then I turned around and started running,” she said. “ While I was running, I saw this guy sitting at a table that was slumped over and bloody.  Apparently no one had seen him get hurt.  Someone was just walking up to him and seeing and saying, ‘Everybody get out.’ “ 

Prichett said the attacker had escaped attention by blending into the busy campus scene. 

“He was just walking around very calmly with the knife down by his side,” Prichett remembered after she reunited with her boyfriend near the scene of the attack. “ You wouldn’t have seen it unless you were paying attention.” 

One person is dead and three others have been taken to the hospital after a reported stabbing attack on the University of Texas campus Monday afternoon, according to Austin-Travis County EMS. 

University police said they have a suspect in custody and that the public is not in any immediate threat.  Officials are asking the public to avoid the area near 21st Street and Speedway. 

Around 1:46 p.m. emergency officials first responded to the stabbing near Gregory Gym at 2101 Speedway. 
EMS reported that they have taken three people with potentially serious injuries to University Medical Center Brackenridge. 

I will update as I learn more. 

comments

Perhaps more students will start taking responsibility for their own safety and take adva ntage of campus carry — with a TX Concealed Handgun License, of course.  I’ve been in higher ed since 1990 and can tell you that campuses can be dangerous places. 

I’m at a TX community college, where campus carry takes effect this August.  About dang time.