LOS ANGELES – Police on Saturday identified a man who allegedly stabbed a doctor and two nurses in the emergency department of a Southern California hospital and stayed in a room for hours before police arrested him.
Ashkan Amirsoleymani, 35, has been charged with three counts of attempted murder in connection with Friday’s attack, the Los Angeles Police Department said on Twitter.
He was detained on $ 3 million bail. On Saturday, it was not immediately clear if there was a lawyer who could speak on his behalf, and the district attorney’s office did not respond to an email asking if charges had been filed.
Police have not yet revealed Amirsoleymani’s motive, and Los Angeles police Rosario Cervantes said no other information was available on Saturday.
Amirsoleymani entered the Encino Hospital Medical Center in the San Fernando Valley just before 4 p.m. On Friday, police said.
He parked the car in the middle of the street and went to the emergency room, where he sought treatment for anxiety before stabbing a doctor and a nurse, authorities said.
Firefighters said the three victims were transferred to the trauma center in critical condition. Police later said one was in critical condition and underwent surgery.
KNBC-TV reports that Dignity Health Northridge Hospital Medical Center said two victims were treated and released. The third victim is still hospitalized in good but stable condition, the TV station reported.
The hospital did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Saturday.
The first floor of Encino Hospital and some nearby offices were evacuated during the attack, police said.
There was no evidence that the man – later identified as Amirsoleymani – knew the victims, LAPD Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton told a news conference on Friday.
He remained in the hospital room for about four hours as SWAT team members tried unsuccessfully to negotiate with him before he was finally arrested, police said.
No one else at the hospital was injured, and other patients were able to be treated, said Elizabeth Nikels, a spokeswoman for Prime Healthcare, which runs Encino Hospital.
Amirsoleymani was later transferred to another hospital to treat self-injuries on his hands, authorities said.
Hamilton said he had a long criminal record, including two arrests last year for beating a police officer and resisting arrest.
Parham Saadat, a dental hygienist who works nearby, told the Los Angeles Times that he and his colleague ran down the street to help the victims.
“There was blood on the floor, blood in the rooms, blood on the wheelchair on which the doctor was lying,” Saadat told the newspaper. “It was bloodshed.”
Saadat said he later closed the warehouse door behind the suspect to keep him inside and got scared only when they made eye contact.
“He just turned his face very calmly and looked out the window at me, then turned his head. No reaction, “he said. “That’s where it got me.”
Benjamin Roman, an ultrasound technician, told KNBC-TV that before the sting he saw the suspect, who had a dog with him and who may have been under drugs because he looked anxious and was drenched in sweat.
After the hospital issued an “internal triage” code, Roman said he saw a doctor and a nurse stabbed.
“The doctor looked (like) in pain,” he said. “There was a lot of blood and it looked like … it might have hit her belly.”
Nickels said in an email that hospital staff faced a harrowing situation with “incredible courage, composure and dedication”.
“Their focus has remained on staff and patient safety all along,” she wrote.
The attack came just two days after an armed assailant killed four people and then himself at a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The attacker entered the building on the campus of Saint Francis Hospital without any problems, just hours after he bought an AR-style rifle, authorities said.
A man killed his surgeon and three other people in a medical office. He blamed the doctor for the constant pain after a recent back operation.