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Eleven people were stabbed at a shelter for the unhoused in Salem, Oregon, on Sunday evening, according to authorities.
Salem police said they arrested a man in connection with the mass stabbing carried out at about 7.15pm local time at a facility run by an organization called the Union Gospel Mission. The suspect was not immediately identified.
First responders brought the victims to a local hospital with “varying types” of wounds. Officials did not immediately provide exact details on the severity of the injuries, though the Salem Statesman Journal reported one victim was seen “bleeding heavily from the neck”.
The attacker had spent Saturday night at the Union Gospel Mission building but was considered new to the facility, the site’s executive director, Craig Smith, said in an interview with NBC News.
He apparently was about to check in for a second night – preparing to hand over his belongings to staff – when he got into a fight.
“Something … set him off, and he evidently had a knife in his bag,” Smith told NBC.
Smith said a mission employee working the check-in desk was among the wounded. He added that victims were found in the shelter’s day room as well as outside the building – and that the facility’s security video system captured “the whole incident”.
A Union Gospel mission resident, Bobby Epperly, told the Statesman Journal that there was “blood everywhere” in the facility.
“It’s like a horror movie,” Epperly said to the newspaper.
Cellphone video circulating on social media reportedly showed the moment when the suspect in Sunday’s mass stabbing was arrested. The video showed two police officers with pistols drawn successfully ordering a shirtless man to get on the ground before they handcuffed him.
A man with a crutch approached the officers and the detained man – who were out on a street – before the police ordered him to back away.
“That’s right – you’re going in!” someone who was not in the video’s frame can be heard screaming in the direction of the arrested man.
Union Gospel Mission’s website says it helps “men, women and children break free from homelessness” through Christianity. A group of Christian businesspeople founded the non-profit ministry, which offers counseling and aims to house about 150 people nightly, according to its website.
The attack occurred at a 50,000-sq-ft facility that was opened in 2021 after Union Gospel Mission moved out of another complex it had long used previously. It sits across the street from the Salem police department.
In the US, shootings are the most common type of mass violence. But stabbings are also a relatively frequent way of carrying out mass violence in the country, data show.
