A man stabbed a doctor and two nurses in a Californian hospital before barricading himself inside a room for several hours.
The man walked into Encino Hospital Medical Center in the San Fernando Valley shortly before 4pm yesterday, Los Angeles police said.
It is understood he asked to be treated for anxiety before stabbing the doctor and nurses, authorities said.
The victims were rushed to a trauma centre in a critical condition with one requiring surgery, police said.
All three were later said to be in a stable condition at Dignity Health Northridge Hospital Medical Center.
After the attack the man remained inside a room in the hospital for about four hours as SWAT team members tried, unsuccessfully, to negotiate with him before he was finally arrested, police said.
He was taken to another hospital for treatment of self-inflicted injuries to his arms, authorities said.
The first floor of Encino hospital and some nearby offices were evacuated, police said.
‘We’ve moved patients out of the danger zone,’ LAPD deputy chief Alan Hamilton said at a news conference.
It is understood the man had parked his car in the middle of a street before entering the emergency ward.
Authorities have not released the attacker’s name but dept chief Hamilton said he had a lengthy criminal record, including two arrests last year for battery of a police officer and resisting arrest.
There was no evidence that the man knew his victims.
Benjamin Roman, an ultrasound technician, told KNBC-TV that he saw the man before the attack.
He said the man had a dog with him and might have been high on drugs because he looked anxious and was drenched in sweat.
After the hospital issued an ‘internal triage’ code, Roman said he saw a doctor and a nurse who had been stabbed.
‘The doctor looked (like) she was in pain,’ he said.
‘There was a lot of blood and it looked like … he might have got her abdomen.’
Yesterday’s attack comes just two days after a gunman four people and then himself at a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The assailant got inside a building on the Saint Francis Hospital campus with little trouble, just hours after buying an AR-style rifle, authorities said.
The man his surgeon and three other people at a medical office.
He reportedly blamed the doctor for his continuing pain after a recent back operation.
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