A 59-year-old man stabbed at least eight people Tuesday at a shopping mall in the South Korean city of Incheon, police and fire officials said. One victim was in life-threatening condition and received surgery at a nearby hospital, per the AP. The suspect attacked shoppers as he moved through the mall before business owners and bystanders subdued him, according to Incheon’s Namdong District Police Station and witnesses. The man, who was not named in keeping with South Korean practice for most criminal suspects, has a history of violent offenses and mental illness and was required to wear an electronic monitoring anklet, according to South Korea’s Justice Ministry.
Witnesses told South Korean media that the attacker appeared to have knives tied to both hands and stabbed people in different parts of the mall while moving up and down the floors on an escalator. Nah Hyun-joon, who helped subdue the attacker, said he saw the man attack about four people in the second-floor food court before moving up to the third floor, where he stabbed at least one woman. “He just stabbed whoever he saw,” Nah said. He said the attacker then headed toward a multiplex movie theater on the fourth floor but was blocked by several people holding chairs at the top of the escalator. Nah said he and others trapped the man from below and eventually subdued him near the escalator’s third-floor entrance before police arrived.
The injured were taken to nearby hospitals, including one woman in her 20s who underwent surgery after arriving in cardiac arrest, Incheon’s fire department said. The department didn’t provide details on the severity of the other injuries. The suspect was reportedly sentenced to four years in prison for attempted murder in 2015. He was placed under electronic monitoring in 2019 and was booked last month on suspicion of carrying a weapon after using a kitchen knife to puncture a protest sign outside a hospital where he had a dispute, the Justice Ministry said, adding that he met with his probation officer less than two hours before the attack began.