Anatomy of a crisis
With the welcome announcement that the student who was seriously injured on Oct. 8 in a stabbing attack in Young Hall is out of intensive care and in good condition at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, one can almost hear a collective sigh of relief across the campus.
The outcome might have been tragically different, had it not been for emergency response teams, police, counselors, building managers and others who found themselves in the thick of the situation and handled the crisis with composure and compassion. Judy Lin of UCLA Today spoke with a few of the people who played a role in this heroic effort.
Biochemistry graduate student Cyril Baida, a teaching assistant, had been leading students in a noon-hour biochemistry lab on the sixth floor of Young Hall when he heard someone yelling, “Call 911!”
The Oct. 8 stabbing of a student by another cast a pall on the campus and reminded many that violence can happen anywhere. Photo by Stephanie Diani.
“I opened the door and saw a student and a TA walking in the hallway,” Baida recalled. She [the student] was bleeding, and he was holding her neck.”
Baida pulled the student and the TA — Baida’s counterpart in the lab of organic chemistry lecturer Alfred Bacher — into his lab, sat them down and calmly dialed the UC Police Department. It was 12:15 p.m.
"He deserves a medal,” Baida said later of the TA, who wants to remain anonymous. “I turned completely pale” while they waited for the medics, “but he was just fine. He never let go of her. That took a lot of guts.”
'Glove me up!'
Stacy Nakamoto — the biochemistry lecturer for whom Baida serves as TA — was returning from an errand to her sixth-floor office “when I was told — incorrectly — that one of my students had been stabbed.” She ran to her lab.
“Glove me up!” Baida recalled Nakamoto saying as soon as she entered. TAs from yet another nearby lab had brought a large first-aid kit into the room, from which they pulled gloves and gauze. Nakamoto took over in stanching the student’s wounds.
“Her eyes rolled back in her head, and I called out her name and told her to stay with me,” Nakamoto would later tell an Los Angeles Times reporter. “She wasn’t really responding. [But] I think she could hear me.”
Within three minutes of Baida’s 911 call, UCPD officers and UCLA emergency medical technicians (EMTs) were on the scene, guided to the exact location by students Baida had dispatched to the building’s ground floor. He also contacted friends and colleagues throughout Young Hall and nearby buildings, advising them to stay in their labs and offices until the suspect was apprehended.
The EMTs — part of an all-student crew that makes up Emergency Medical Services that operates out of UCPD — went into action to stop the bleeding and stabilize the victim. EMS manager Tom Reynolds arrived just five minutes after his crew. He found them already on their way downstairs to an L.A. Fire Department ambulance waiting to speed her to the medical center, where she would be treated by ER medical staff for multiple stab wounds.
Sergeant Tracy Karafelas, one of the first members of the UCPD to arrive on the scene, served as that day's watch commander, responsible for organizing the arriving police units and making it possible for the EMTs to do their job. “The speed at which [the victim] was treated was crucial to her survival,” Karafelas said. “They did a really great job. They did everything exactly as they trained so well to do.”
Police soon learned that the suspect, who they later identified as UCLA senior Damon D. Thompson, had fled down a stairway to a fifth-floor office where Carol Verduzco, an administrative assistant, worked. He admitted to her that he was the suspect and she alerted police, who arrested him and booked him for investigation of attempted murder.
Meanwhile, the BruinAlert system notified the campuswide community via phone, text message and e-mail: “Police emergency at Young Hall. Situation under control. All persons should avoid Young Hall.”
Keping things calm
Nancy Blumstein, interim co-manager of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, had been off-campus at a meeting when “somebody’s pocket went off” — the BruinAlert. Racing back to Young Hall, she was met by police who had cordoned off the sixth floor as a crime scene. To assist with the investigation and interviewing of 30 to 40 potential witnesses to the stabbing, UCPD called in the Los Angeles Police Department.
Also streaming in were members of the media. “There were reporters everywhere,” Blumstein said. “It was overwhelming.” Staff from UCLA’s Office of Media Relations and Public Outreach arrived to handle the media and organize a press conference with LAPD and UCPD leadership shortly after 2 p.m.
“Everybody was just in a little bit of shock and just trying to stay calm,” Blumstein said. “I wanted to make sure we kept that calm and to see if there was anything we could do.”
Nakamoto placed a call to UCLA Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), asking for counselors to help students cope with the crisis. CAPS clinicians were already on the way.
Someone to talk to
“Bonnie Zucker and I were the first to arrive,” said psychologist Peter Kassel, CAPS clinical administrator and training director. “The mood was somber. There was an air of expectancy — uncertainty about what we were going to find.”
Students had already been isolated in two rooms to be interviewed by police. Uncertain about the number of students that needed help, Kassel called his office requesting reinforcements. “We wanted to be over-prepared.” A team of about eight psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers set up a makeshift area at Young Hall where counselors were available for the rest of the day.
CAPS Director Elizabeth Gong-Guy, enroute from an out-of-town conference, stayed in the loop via her Blackberry. “While Peter and the others were at the site, clinicians back in our offices [at the Ashe Center] prepared for any students that might come in needing assistance,” she recalled. Many did come in that night, and counselors remained there until 7 p.m. — two hours past closing time — to accommodate them.
Calls were also coming in to the Staff and Faculty Counseling Center at the Wilshire Center, said center co-directors Jorge Cherbosque and Nan Levine-Mann, who met with several staff and faculty members upset by the incident. Several days later, they also conducted a crisis response debriefing for one department.
Back at Young Hall, Blumstein made sure that as student witnesses were released by police, she introduced them to the counselors. “I think just seeing them really made the students know that the campus was there for them,” she said.
“I was happy they were there,” said Baida, the TA. “It was comforting just to have the counselor give me his card and to know that at night, if I couldn’t sleep, I could go see them,” which he did the following day. Later, CAPS counselors, at the request of lecturers Nakamoto and Bacher, spoke with all of their students earlier this week. “It was a very positive and powerful experience,” said Kassel. “They asked questions that made it clear that they’re grappling with this.”
Getting home
Blumstein noticed that even after students had been released, they weren’t leaving. She discovered that all of their belongings were being held by the police while they continued to investigate the crime scene.
“I thought, oh my goodness, these guys don’t have money, keys, … cell phones. They can’t go home,” said Blumstein, who offered the students bus fare, dinner money and use of her phone to find a way home.
As the police wrapped up their work, Blumstein and colleagues contacted a company that specializes in biohazardous clean-up. Facilities Management dispatched a manager to oversee them. The cleanup crew was still at it at midnight when Blumstein finally left for home. “I just didn’t want to leave until I was entirely confident that the building was going to look like it did that morning — and not that afternoon.”
Courage commended
Earlier this week, Chancellor Gene Block visited the student — the university is not authorized to provide her name — in the hospital. “She has demonstrated extraordinary courage, and I'm pleased her condition has improved," Block said.
In a letter he sent to the campus community, Block lauded the swift response of campus police and emergency medical technicians, singling out the teaching assistant who helped to stanch the victim's bleeding and keep her conscious before emergency crews arrived.
"I'm enormously proud of the heroic actions of everybody involved under exceptionally traumatic circumstances," Block said. "They deserve acknowledgement and praise from the entire campus community."
Charged with one count of attempted murder, Thompson pleaded not guilty during his arraignment on Oct. 14. Los Angeles Count Superior Court Judge Keith L. Schwartz ordered that he be held on $3 million bail. Prosecutors said the attack on his classmate was unprovoked.
________________________________________________________________________
