This past Tuesday evening, two individuals were attacked and stabbed while shopping inside a Los Angeles area Target store before a security guard was able to gun down the suspect, who went on to die of their wounds.
The two victims were a 25-year-old woman and a 9-year-old boy who the suspect attacked at close 6:22 p.m. within a store located in downtown Los Angeles, as reported by police.
Michel Moore, the Los Angeles Police Department Chief, expressed to gathered media that the suspected attacker had been a forty-year-old man that seemed to be homeless. He allegedly went after the two victims while wielding a large 9-inch kitchen knife.
Captain Elaine Morales of the LAPD Central Division also spoke out to say that the man acquired the weapon from the store shelves at Target and then rushed to the checkout area of the store to kick off his almost rabid attack. Morales also stated that both of the victims were still marked as in critical condition.
Reportedly, the suspect first went up to the young child and stated “that he was going to stab him and kill him,” as explained by Moore. “He repeated that more than once.”
As the boy attempted to sprint away from the attack, the man “without any further provocation” stabbed the man in the back, explained Moore. People in the area of the attack tried to assist the boy while the man swapped targets to rush and continue the savage attack against a woman and stab her “brutally in the chest.”
An armed security guard stationed within the store was able to intervene as he fired upon and shot the suspect in the wake of trying to use a baton. As the suspect charged the guard with the knife, the guard shot him at least one time.
“Out of nowhere, we heard people screaming,” explained Kevin Zaragoza, who had been shopping in the store at the time of the attack, to KABC in the wake of the event. “We rushed to the front. Right there by the exit we see a girl on the floor, blood all over her. After that, we see the whole LAPD swarming in there with shotguns, all types of stuff. It was crazy.”
The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) put out in September its 2022 Homeless County, which claimed an estimated 69,144 homeless people were present in the area of Los Angeles county, a spike of 4.1% since 2020.
