Texas university stabbing kills student
3 more hurt before suspect arrested; witness calls knife-wielder ‘emotionless’
AUSTIN, Texas — A man killed one student and wounded three others Monday on the University of Texas campus, walking from one to another and stabbing them with a hunting knife, setting off panic and rumors of a larger wave of violence.
The university police identified the suspect as Kendrex White, a 21-year-old student who was quickly arrested. Witnesses described the suspect as eerily composed during the episode near Gregory Gymnasium, and said that when he was confronted by police officers at gunpoint, he did not resist, speak nor appear to hurry.
There were reports of additional victims with injuries that weren’t life-threatening, according to tweets from Travis County Emergency Medical Services.
Rachel Prichett, 19, a student from Austin, said she was standing at a food truck when she heard screaming, turned and saw a man holding what looked like “a small machete” approaching her, “just walking calmly with the knife to his side.”
The suspect walked behind a man a few feet away from her, then grasped the man’s shoulder with one hand and with the other hand stabbed him in the back, thrusting the knife “all the way in.”
Prichett said she fled, running past another victim, who was slumped over a table.
University Police Chief David Carter said at a news conference that authorities did not know of a motive for the stabbings, saying it would be “premature” to discuss “what was going through his mind.”
Carter, who described the weapon as a “Bowie-style” knife, said the stabbings occurred within a one-block area as the attacker “calmly walked around the plaza.”
White is black. Carter said the four who were stabbed, all ages 20 or 21, were three white men and one Asian-American man. One died at the scene, and the others were taken to the university medical center. The authorities did not immediately release the victims’ names.
A student who said he knows White socially, William Verastegui, said the suspect had always seemed friendly. “He didn’t seem to be hotheaded; he didn’t seem to be an angry person or anything like that,” Verastegui said.
The grassy open areas on campus were crowded with students Monday. The police received the first report of the stabbing at 1:49 p.m. Officers arrived within two minutes and arrested White without incident.
Ray Arredondo, 21, a student from San Antonio, said, “I just saw swarms of people running away from Gregory Gym, and my first reaction was ‘gun,’ so I ran, too.”
“The cops were on scene, and they were doing CPR on one victim,” he said. “There was another guy who had lacerations to his head or neck, and a police officer was holding his head.”
Arredondo used his phone to take a picture of officers taking White into custody and posted it to Twitter. “He was like emotionless, very nonchalant, from what I saw,” he said.
Lindsey Clark, 20, a student from Richardson, Texas, heard screaming, then saw police officers force the suspect to the ground outside the Jester Center, across the street from the gymnasium. She said she heard an officer say, “Don’t move or you’re going to get tased.”
The University of Texas is blocks from downtown Austin and the Texas Capitol and is one of the nation’s largest universities.
White was an active member of the Black Health Professionals Organization student organization on campus, said Melody Adindu, the group’s new president. She said White was passionate about his work and was “very interactive and easygoing.”
Some of White’s former classmates at Killeen High School, near the gates of the Fort Hood Army post in Central Texas, had similar recollections of him.
“He was a really smart guy in high school, he was always nice, had plenty of friends, and was in the International Baccalaureate program. I’m definitely surprised he would do this,” Kay’Lynn Wilkerson told the Killeen Daily Herald.
Ex-classmate Angela Bonilla called White “the sweetest guy, laughing and having a good time with people.”
Carter said White was confronted and arrested within two minutes of the first call to police, and the situation was immediately under control. The campus siren wasn’t used because there was no need for a lockdown to keep people in place, he said.
“There was no ongoing threat. We had him in custody as soon as we arrived,” Carter said.
Information for this article was contributed by Dave Montgomery, Richard Perez-Pena, Cat Cardenas and Manny Fernandez of The New York Times; and by Jim Vertuno and Paul J. Weber of The Associated Press.