Stabbing terror at hospital
Caterer knifed after being told to open pills cabinet
A HOSPITAL was forced into lockdown yesterday as armed police officers searched for a knifeman who stabbed a caterer.
Joseph George, whose injuries are not life-threatening, was attacked in the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton.
The stabbing was one in a series of violent attacks across ‘Wild West Britain’ at the weekend.
Witnesses said a man grabbed Mr George, 56, on the 11th-floor gynaecology ward and demanded that he open a medicine cabinet with his staff pass.
But the father-of-two’s pass was not authorised to open the cabinet. The assailant stabbed him three times and ran away.
Armed officers scoured the hosgarden
‘They were all armed’
pital and surrounding area for the knifeman as terrified staff were locked in their wards and patients were diverted to other hospitals. An hour later, a 30-year-old man was arrested in a nearby garden.
Mr George’s distraught wife, neo-natal nurse Beena, told how she had worked a night shift at the same hospital and woke to hear the news. A police spokesman said the incident was not being treated as a terrorist attack and no- one else had been hurt.
A nurse posted online: ‘Yes, it is an incredibly scary time but the police and hospital security have been amazing. Thank you for your concerns. Stay safe everyone and look after one another.’
Bernard Bannister, 72, said he heard a commotion in his front after returning home from buying his morning newspaper.
He added: ‘When I looked out, as far as the eye could see, there were police vehicles with blue flashing lights. I could see nothing other than police vehicles. My granddaughter counted at least 30 police officers.
‘They were all armed, with the guns either in their hands or slung around them. Every officer was carrying a weapon. I did not see the person they apprehended.’
A police spokesman said: ‘This apparently isolated and unexplained incident is not being treated as terrorism at this time and there is currently nothing to suggest that any other person has been involved or that anyone else is at risk.’ The hospital was back up and running by the afternoon.
Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust said: ‘The staff member is in a safe and stable state, and is being cared for in the hospital.’
Health Secretary Matt Hancock tweeted: ‘We will bring the full force of the law to bear on anyone who attacks public servants in their line of duty.’
Thorpe Park also went into lockdown on Saturday when a man was stabbed in the stomach after a fight broke out at the Surrey theme park. Two men, also in their 20s, were arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.
In Merseyside, armed officers were sent to a residential street yesterday after reports a man had been attacked with a machete. Police said the victim, in his 40s, suffered neck and leg injuries.
In Redruth, Cornwall, yesterday a man was found with stab wounds to his leg outside a betting shop.
In the early hours of Friday in London, a man in his 30s was knifed to death in Enfield. Later that day, two men were stabbed near Liverpool Street station.