The 20-year-old Lone Star College student accused of stabbing 14 of his classmates told investigators he’d been planning the spree for some time and had fantasies of stabbing people to death since his elementary school days.
So vicious were the random, building-to-building attacks carried out by Dylan Andrew Quick that his thrusts left pieces of a razor-type knife in at least one of his 14 victims, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday night. Two students were in critical condition and four are in fair condition. Four were flown by helicopter from the sprawling Cy-Fair campus outside Houston to hospitals. Some were treated on scene.
The violence was reported around 11:13 a.m. local time at the school’s Cy-Fair campus in north Harris County.
Quick is charged with three counts of aggravated assault. Police say pieces of the blade were found inside at least one victim and around the area where he slashed his classmates. The knife’s handle was found in the backpack the Quick wore while he allegedly terrorized his community college classmates. Quick was dressed in all black, a cap pulled over his bushy red hair.
The first emergency call described “a male on the loose stabbing people,” Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia said.
Student Steven Maida tells the Daily News he was walking to his vehicle on campus when chaos broke out. People were running, he said, including one who said, “My friend got stabbed in the face.” Maida and a group took off after the suspect. The group eventually caught up to the suspect, pulling him down by his backpack and restraining him, Maida said. The suspect’s hearing aids fell out during the struggle, Maida said.
“He said, ‘I give up,’” Maida said. “I asked him, ‘Why’d you do this to these girls, why?’ but he just stared up at me.”
Another witness told Maida the suspect was “Dylan” and that “he’s a nice kid.” She didn’t tell Maida the suspect’s last name. “Just hearing that girls were being stabbed in the face made me want to help,” Maida told the Daily News on Tuesday evening.
Witnesses told CBS affiliate KHOU 11 that the incident erupted in a lab at the campus’ Health Sciences building.
Student Margo Shimfarr-Evans said she had just left the building when she learned a classmate had been stabbed.
“It happened in the hallway, we have a lab and lecture, and down the hallway it’s all lab classes and a classmate in the lab class got stabbed,” she said.
Police said at a news conference it was a random “building-to-building attack.” How many buildings or classrooms were involved is unclear. An officer said a student tackled the suspect, who was then detained by police.
Student Michael Chalfan told The Associated Press he was walking to class when he saw a group of police officers running after Quick. He said one of the officers used a stun gun to help subdue the man, whom Chalfan said he recognized from a drama class last year.
Chalfan described Quick as “eccentric,” saying he often wore gloves and was known to carry stuffed animals. He said although the man was teased by fellow students, he remained friendly.
“I’m surprised because he didn’t look like he was hateful to the world,” Chalfan said.
The Chronicle reported that Quick, who was once homeschooled, was born deaf and had a cochlear implant at age 7.
The Chronicle reports Quick told a man in the Cy-Fair jail that he wanted to go on a “killing spree” but that the knife’s blade broke. He told investigators he planned the attack for “some time” and had fantasies of such a spree since elementary school.
Several calls by the Daily News to Quick’s mother, Tiffany Quick, went unanswered Tuesday.
An earlier alert put out by the school on Facebook said there were possibly two armed suspects, with one still at large.
After the attacks, school officials closed the campus for the day, but it will reopen Wednesday. About 7,000 people are on the Cy-Fair campus on any given day, police said.
A Lone Star College campus in north Harris was the scene of violence in January when gunfire wounded three people.
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