Seoul, Oct 14:
A 59-year-old man stabbed at least eight people Tuesday at a shopping mall in the South Korean city of Incheon, police and fire officials said. One victim was in life-threatening condition and received surgery at a nearby hospital.
The suspect attacked shoppers as he moved through the mall before business owners and bystanders subdued him, according to Incheon’s Namdong District Police Station and witnesses.
The man has a history of violent offenses and mental illness and was required to wear an electronic monitoring anklet, according to South Korea’s Justice Ministry. The man’s name was not released, in keeping with South Korean practice for most criminal suspects.
Witnesses told South Korean media that the attacker appeared to have knives tied to both hands and stabbed people in different parts of the mall while moving up and down the floors on an escalator.
Nah Hyun-joon, who helped subdue the attacker using chairs with several other people, said he saw the man attack about four people in the second-floor food court before moving up to the third floor, where he stabbed at least one woman.
Nah said the attacker then headed toward a multiplex movie theater on the fourth floor but was blocked by several people holding chairs at the top of the escalator. Nah said he and others trapped the man from below and eventually subdued him near the escalator’s third-floor entrance, pushing him down with chairs and removing his knives, before police arrived.
âHe just went around stabbing people,â Nah told OBS television. âHe didn’t even say anything. He just stabbed whoever he saw.”
The injured were taken to nearby hospitals, including one woman in her 20s who underwent surgery after arriving in cardiac arrest, Incheon’s fire department said. The department didn’t provide details on the severity of the other injuries.
The suspect was sentenced to four years in prison for attempted murder in 2015, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency. He was placed under electronic monitoring in 2019 and had committed no repeat offenses while under supervision, the Justice Ministry said.