Police sources have confirmed that three individuals, together with one police officer, had been stabbed with a knife at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Worldwide Airport’s (ATL) south terminal this afternoon.
It appears the assailant was a girl, whose identify has not been launched, whom police stated is homeless and recognized to frequent the airport. At round 4:45 p.m., she began by stabbing a person whereas exterior of a safety checkpoint close to the west crossover, at which level the airport police had been known as. The lady then headed into the south terminal.
“So, once we did encounter her, there had already been that stabbing that occurred,”stated Atlanta Police Sgt. John Chafee informed the information crew at Fox 5. When regulation enforcement officers arrived on the scene, they surrounded the aggressor and tried to take her into custody. Police first tried to calm her with their phrases and to influence her to drop the knife she held.
“There’s a little bit little bit of second that occurred there,” stated Sgt. Chafee. As a substitute of surrendering, the perpetrator proceeded to lunge at one other girl and an airport police lieutenant, stabbing them each.
At that time, an officer was capable of bodily sort out and arrest the armed girl, she was taken into police custody and transferred to the airport precinct. The attacker herself was evidently not injured within the wrestle.
The APD lieutenant was reportedly punctured within the thigh, the place the blade struck an artery, whereas the third sufferer—airport ticket clerk—was reportedly solely nicked by the knife. All three had been rushed to Grady Memorial Hospital for therapy of their wounds.
The offender’s motivation stays a thriller. “Expenses are going to be filed in some unspecified time in the future,” stated Sgt. Chafee, which will probably be decided solely as soon as investigators have had enough to piece collectively what precisely occurred.
Sgt. Chafee informed reporters that the safety checkpoint was not shut down due to the incident. “The areas the place the crime scenes are blocked off, however there’s a number of totally different entrances that can be utilized on the airport,” he stated.
A video posted to social media by one of many passengers who was within the terminal on the time reveals that folks in line on the safety gate had been kneeling down, per police instruction, till the menace handed. They are often heard clapping after the all-clear is lastly given.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reportedly indicated that no delays had been attributable to the incident, however stated that particular person flights might be impacted. Atlanta Airport posted an all-clear notice to its official X (previously Twitter) account about 40 minutes after the primary stabbing occurred. “Impacts to operations are minimal,” it reads, “There isn’t any menace to the general public.”
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