Fourteen people were injured on Tuesday when Dylan Quick went on a stabbing rampage at Lone Star College, northwest of Houston, Texas. Two of the victims remain hospitalized and in critical condition.
Quick, 20, used "a razor-type knife" to stab the victims, according to the Harris County Sheriff's Office, who spoke to CNN. Pieces of a blade were found in at least one victim, and the knife handle was in the backpack of the suspect when he was arrested.
"It just seemed like he was just going around, basically getting whoever was more open and easiest for him to reach," said Cassie Foe, a nursing student who helped a victim by applying pressure to a neck would after hearing screams during the attack.
Witnesses described chaos. Bleeding victims collapsed as teachers and students ran to escape danger. A few went into action, chasing the suspect and assisting the wounded.
Steven Maida thought there was a campus tour due to the large crowd. Then he realized they were running and someone said, "My friend's been stabbed."
There was blood on the stairs and several injured victims, among them a woman with a throat wound, a woman with a cheek wound and a man with a stab wound to the back of his head.
"I just took off downstairs running," Maida said. He joined a group of students who chased down the suspect, tackled him and pinned him down until authorities arrived. "I couldn't run the other way like everyone else was."
A call came into 911 describing a "male on the loose stabbing people."
Melody Vinton, who was in a chemistry class, began to help bleeding victims.
"I turned around and there was just blood, just blood dripping down the stairs, all over the floor, all over everyone's towels on their necks, just a lot of blood," she told KHOU. "There's no humanity in that.
"Just to see another human being do that was more traumatic than anything," she said.
The school went into lockdown Tuesday, posting a warning on its web site: "Stay away from the area. Seek shelter in a secure location until the incident is resolved."
While authorities investigated to make sure it was safe, students and teachers gathered in locked rooms, said Marianna Syiland, a teacher at the college.
"Outside the window, I saw cops running around, I saw students running and I realized something was going on," she said. "It was scary."
Quick told investigators that "he has had fantasies of stabbing people to death since he was in elementary school," according to the Harris County, Texas, Sheriff's Office. He also said he had been planning Tuesday's attack "for some time."
Quick has been charged with three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, according to Donna Hawkins, an official with the Harris County Prosecutor's Office.
Quick was a student at Lone Star College.
Campus officials said counselors would be speaking with faculty and students. The incident came less than three months after three people were wounded in a shooting at a different Lone Star College campus, the North Harris campus in Houston.
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