One of the 21 students stabbed at Pennsylvania’s Franklin Regional High School on Wednesday was eviscerated and may not survive.
Eviscerated can mean disembowel, or cut open and remove the internal organs of; it can also refer to the surgical technique of removing the contents of a body organ.
Westmoreland County District Attorney John Peck said after the stabbings that four students were in critical condition, including one who was “eviscerated” and may not survive.
On Thursday, that count was updated to three in critical condition, with 10 boys hospitalized in total.
Police and doctors said one victim, a 17-year-old whose name was not released, had surgery again overnight and was in very critical condition after suffering a knife thrust that pierced his liver and missed his heart and aorta by fractions of an inch.
Another student, Brett Hurt, 16, told of being stabbed in the back.
“What was going through my mind?” Hurt said at a hospital news conference. “Will I survive or will I die.”
Hurt said he pushed his friend Gracie Evans out of the attacker’s way, and then after he was stabbed, she stayed with him and put pressure on the wound.
“Gracie was screaming and asking me if I was all right,” Hurt said.
Hurt’s mother, Amanda Leonard, said of Evans: “I’ve hugged her and kissed her. I have told her thank you. There is nothing in the world I can do for that girl that can thank her enough for what she has done.”
As for the assailant, Hurt said he hopes that someday “I can forgive him, and everyone else who got hurt can forgive him. First of all, he needs to forgive himself.”
Lawyers for Alex Hribal, 16, who had no history of mental illness or troublemaking, argued that he may have mental problems.
Attorney Patrick Thomassey said that Hribal also didn’t abuse drugs and was no outcast at school, where the lawyer described him as a B or B-plus student.
“In a case like this, it’s pretty obvious to me that there must be something inside this young man that nobody knew about,” Thomassey told The Associated Press.
The local prosecutor, meanwhile, said Hribal remained an enigma.
“We have very little information about him,” Westmoreland County District Attorney John Peck said, “except for the fact that he was a student, his age, and how he was as a student.”
The rampage started early Wednesday around 7 a.m. when Hribal, armed with two knives he brought from his home, started slashing and stabbing people in the hallways of Franklin Regional, which is in Murrysville not too far from Pittsburgh.
After wounding 21 people he ran off after a fire alarm was pulled by one of the students. A security guard and assistant principal wrestled him to the ground, but not before he stabbed another security guard. A school senior is also credited with helping tackle him to the ground.
The guard was released from the hospital.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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