Bret Hurt, a sophomore injured Wednesday's school knife attack, wondered, "Will I survive or will I die?" once he noticed he was bleeding, the 16-year-old said Thursday at a news conference.
Hurt is being called a hero for his response when a
classmate attacked with a knife at Franklin Regional High School in Pennsylvania, injuring 20 students. He is credited with protecting a friend, Gracey Evans, after Alex Hribal, 16, allegedly began stabbing and slashing with two knives in the hallway. But although Evans has said he protected her, Hurt said he doesn’t remember much of the attack.
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“It happened so fast, it’s kind of hard to describe,”
Hurt said at the news conference, USA Today reported. “There were so many kids in the hallways and when someone said they saw blood or something, everyone just started screaming. When I got hit, everyone noticed and just started running in different directions. Gracey was screaming and started asking if I was all right.”
Hurt said Evans kept pressure on his back and saved his life.
Hurt told the media he was blessed to be alive and that he wondered if someone could have shown the attacker “a different path,” said USA Today.
Hribal was arraigned as an adult, and is being charged with four counts of attempted homicide and 21 counts of aggravated assault.
Hribal’s attorney told CNN that his client’s mental health would be assessed, and said, “I’m not sure he knows what he did, quite frankly.”
Hurt and his mother, Amanda Hurt, both showed compassion for Hribal.
“Maybe if he had more friends or somebody to help him out or to show him a different path, maybe it would have been different,” the teen said said.
“Any child that is honestly able to do something like that, I feel that it is not only his peers, his family, but it is the school who needs to look and say what have we done to alienate this child for him to do such a gruesome thing,” USA Today reported Amanda Hurt said at the news conference.
Hurt said he’d only met Hribal a couple of times and didn’t know him.
“He'll have to do the work to forgive himself," he said.
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