June 16 (UPI) — Two court security officers were stabbed in an apparent “targeted attack” while screening people at metal detectors in the Lower Manhattan criminal courthouse on Monday morning, the New York Police Department said.
At about 9:35 a.m, the man ran into the lobby and charged the officers, WCBS-TV reported.
Both officers were taken to a local hospital in stable condition, sources told WABC-TV. One person was slashed in the face and the other stabbed in the neck. A third officer was hurt after being thrown into a barrier.
In the shooting, surveillance video shows the man taking knife out of a bag, running at one of the victims, turning around and attacking the other.
“The assaults, captured on surveillance video, appeared preliminarily to be a targeted attack of the uniformed officers working security details at the courthouse,” a spokesman for the state Office of Court Administration said in a statement. “Several court officers immediately rushed to stop the assailant, subduing him near a bank of magnetometers, disarming him and taking him into custody.”
Police said the unnamed suspect had 18 prior arrests, including assaulting an officer. He is considered emotionally disturbed with past incidents at the courthouse, officials said.
The accused assailant didn’t have a scheduled hearing at the courthouse.
“I’ve been coming here for over 20 years. I’ve never seen an incident of that nature toward the court officers,” criminal defense attorney Charles Miller told WCBS. “It’s very unlikely to see people try to come in with weapons, because there’s magnetometers that would see them. But the overwhelming majority of what I see here are fights that happen between people in the hallway, the general public, usually that are connected in some way to the case.
“That’s why the court staff is primarily here to maintain security and order. Assaults directly against them are rare.”
Patrick Cullen, president of the New York State Supreme Court Officers Association, said the courthouse is at least 15% understaffed.
“Every courthouse needs more people,” Cullen told WCBS. “If somebody came in and attacked our officers right at the entrance, we could have had 100 officers there and this still may have happened, but the fact is that if we had more officers, someone would be less inclined to do this.”