A dozen 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 in the case was identified as Tony Latrell Williams, 42, of Bend, Oregon. Investigators said there was no indication Williams had targeted the shelter in advance of Sunday’s attack.
First responders initially brought 11 victims to a local hospital with “varying types” of wounds. At a news briefing on Monday, Salem police deputy chief Treven Upkes said officers discovered a 12th stabbing victim while interviewing witnesses.
Five of those stabbed remained in critical condition Monday, police said.
Williams 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. The remaining 11 victims were one other staffer and 10 guests of the mission – including nine who were staying overnight and one who was enrolled in a drug and alcohol recovery program that takes about 18 months to complete, the shelter’s community engagement director Mark Hunter told the news outlet Salem Reporter.
All of the victims were men between the ages of 26 and 57, police said.
Smith 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 Salem 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.
Police said Williams had traveled from Portland by bus when he arrived in Salem on Saturday. At the time of his arrest on Sunday across from the Union Gospel Mission shelter, he allegedly had a knife that was approximately 8in long.
Williams faces 12 counts of second-degree assault, which is a felony.
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.
The building was closed on Monday morning, though Hunter told the Salem Reporter that officials hoped to reopen it by dinnertime.
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.
Salem mayor Julie Hoy told reporters on Monday that the attack attributed to Williams left her in “shock and disbelief”.
“[I’m] most concerned with those who are still in the hospital – those who were just there,” Hoy said. “It’s a difficult thing to process.”
