Mass knife attacks, like at Texas college, are rare

An attack by a knife-wielding student on a college campus near Houston on Tuesday left 14 people wounded – two of them seriously – and rekindled fears of yet another brazen daytime assault on students.

But such mass stabbings are uncommon, criminologists and experts say.

Since 1901, there have been only seven mass stabbings in a public place in the USA where four or more victims were killed, said Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has written about mass murders. Most mass killings are carried out with firearms, he said.

"Mass stabbings are exceptionally rare," Duwe said. "Guns, or explosives, are generally more effective at killing large numbers of victims."

No one in Tuesday's attack was killed. At about 11 a.m., a Lone Star College System student ran from building to building on the college's CyFair campus, slashing at fellow students and passersby, police said. The student, in his early 20s, wounded 14 people, two of them seriously, before being subdued and arrested, said Christina Garza, a spokeswoman with the Harris County Sheriff's Office.

As of late Tuesday, investigators were trying to determine a motive for the attack. Police were withholding the suspect's name pending charges.

"This is an ongoing investigation," Garza said. "We believe he is the lone actor."

Mass stabbings usually occur in the home, where the suspect uses a knife on unsuspecting family members, Duwe said. Public knife attacks, where victims can possibly outrun an assailant, are much less likely, he said.

The last high-profile mass stabbing in the USA was the 1989 case of Ramon Salcido, a vineyard worker in California who killed seven people, including his wife and two small daughters, before fleeing to Mexico, Duwe said. He was later convicted of the murders.

Only a handful of stabbings have been reported in other countries. On Dec. 14 – the same day as the Newtown, Conn., school shooting – a knife-wielding man attacked students at an elementary school in central China, wounding 22 children and one adult.

Unlike recent high-profile attacks where guns were used, Tuesday's incident likely won't lead to national debates on knife safety or tighter regulations on their sales, said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston.

"Knives just don't create that same sense of fear," he said.