14 DAY TRIAL // A man has been arrested following multiple stabbings at a Target store in the East Liberty area in Pittsburgh.
The assailant entered the store on Monday afternoon, March 25 after being chased in by two men, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. He had stabbed a fourth person at the intersection of Highland Avenue and Whitfield Street.
Among his victims was a 16-year-old girl whom he tried to hold hostage. She was transported to the Children's Hospital with serious wounds to her arm and back.
“After he grabbed the (16-year-old) he was screaming, ‘They tried to rob me. They have my wallet.’ It looked like he was holding her hostage.
“He seen the men coming after him with a bat and he grabbed the woman. They were trying to get him,” witness Dominique Gomez describes.
“One man was stabbed in the mouth. Another was stabbed in the finger. I think the man who was stabbed in the mouth was one of those (who) came up here looking for him,” she adds.
Police spokeswoman Diane Richard tells Trib Live that the attacker was followed by the men that were after him into a restroom on the second floor of the facility. Once he ran out of the restroom, he headed straight for the checkout area where he spotted the girl.
“He grabbed (the 16-year-old)...and held her in front of him with knife still in hand,” Richard says.
Other witnesses have explained that the he was holding a kitchen knife and he was being hit with a baseball bat when he fled inside the store.
“This guy obviously had no regard for anybody. By the time I got in the store the guy with a knife was getting his butt beat with a bat and fists. [...] It was pretty scary hearing girls screaming... Everybody was freaking out, hiding behind shelves, trying to stay out of the way,” Chris Jones of Penn Hills notes.