Mental evaluation set for suspect in Lone Star College stabbings

Police have charged one man in Tuesday’s stabbing rampage at a Houston-area community college, during which 14 people were injured.

Dylan Quick, a student at Lone Star College’s Cy-Fair campus, is being held without bond and is charged with three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Five people remain hospitalized, though they are all in good condition, hospital officials said. Mr. Quick will appear in court Thursday in Houston, according to the Associated Press.

In a voluntary statement to authorities, the suspect admitted that “he has had fantasies of stabbing people to death since he was in elementary school,” according to a news release from the Harris County Sheriff's Office. “He also indicated that he has been planning this incident for some time,” it stated.

On Wednesday, Quick will undergo a psychological evaluation, the Harris County District Attorney's Office told CNN.

Quick’s neighbors said they were taken aback to learn that the shy man who often helped his parents with yard work could be tied to something like this.

Next-door neighbor Michael Lincoln was surprised that the “very friendly kid” was implicated in the incident. Quick helped Mr. Lincoln pull down a branch that had fallen on his roof last week.

“He’s not aggressive,” Lincoln told the Houston Chronicle. He added that Quick did keep mostly to himself.

"He doesn't have any friends. Nobody comes over there," Lincoln said. "He stays inside most of the time."

Magdalena Lopez, who has lived across the street from the Quick family for 15 years, said she couldn’t believe that Quick would do this.

"I can't imagine what would have happened to that young man to make him do something like this. He is very normal," Ms. Lopez told the Associated Press.

Quick came to Lone Star College after being home-schooled, the Houston Chronicle reported. He started attending events at the college’s library when he was 12 to help develop his hearing and communication skills. Born deaf, Quick received ear implants when he was 7 years old, the paper reported.

He attended two book clubs at the library – Classics for Home Schooled Teens and Contemporary Books for Everyone – and after two years of not contributing to the groups, he learned to open up.

“Dylan became loquacious, sharing his analyses of literature and socializing with his book club comrades," said a profile on the library’s website, a blog that focuses on teens transitioning from high school to college that was published April 1.

This is the second attack in three months for Lone Star College, a network of six campuses the Houston area. In January, a fight led to a shooting at the North Harris campus in which three people were injured.

At 11:20 a.m. Central time, Quick used a “razor-like knife” to stab people, moving quickly through campus before being tackled by other students, according to the statement from the sheriff's office.

Ryan Ballard was among the students reported to have helped stop the attack, chasing the suspect as he fled the Health Science building where Mr. Ballard was headed to biology class.

When Ballard entered the building, students were shouting, and several were bleeding, he told the Houston Chronicle.

"My first thought was I need to go catch him,'" he told the paper. "I don't know why I thought that."

Police say they found the handle to the knife in Quick’s backpack, which he was carrying when he was arrested.

The college reopened at regular hours Wednesday after being locked down Tuesday because police believed there was a second suspect. Campus surveillance equipment and eye-witness accounts later confirmed only one perpetrator, the college said in a statement.