In another Texas massacre, two people were stabbed, and one was killed in =side a restaurant during a violent string of attacks on Friday at a shopping plaza in Texas’ capital city.
Police said that the stabbing incident began at a coffee shop and ended with the suspect leaping off a roof.
The attack marked Austin’s first homicide of 2024 which happened on a busy downtown avenue of restaurants and apartments just south of the Texas Capitol.
Pedestrian stopping for their morning coffee on their way to work was terrified after witnessing the attack.
Austin police Sgt. David Daniels told the investigators that the motive behind the attack is still unknown.
The suspect first stabbed a person inside a coffee shop before fleeing and stabbing two people inside Freebirds World Burrito a few doors down.
The man, whose identity remains unknown, jumped off the restaurant’s roof but survived.
One of the eyewitnesses, Stacey Romine ages 33, said that she was getting her drink at Bennu Coffee when she saw the suspect suddenly attack a man who was sitting with a table full of regulars.
“This guy out of nowhere just hit him in the back of the head with something,” Romine said.
“People tried to restrain him and stop him from leaving the store after it happened. But he could not be apprehended by three men, including a police officer.”
Daniels added that she was not aware whether the stabbing victims at Freebirds were employees.
None of the victims has been identified yet, but Austin-Travis EMS said that one victim, in his 20s, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Daniels clarified that attack weapon was a knife but did not say whether it came from the restaurant.
Soon after the attack, Romine ran out of the coffee shop and saw the attacker jump off the roof of Freebirds.
She said that the attacker did not move after hitting the ground, and was transported to a hospital.
Daniels applauded that brave customers who tried to restrain the attacker at the coffee shoe before he fled to Freebirds.
“We don’t recommend individuals getting involved in a situation, but they chose to do that, and it was helpful,” Daniels said.
In 2017, in a random stabbing attack at the University of Texas campus in Austin, one student was killed and three others wounded.
In that case, the attacker was later declared not guilty because of insanity.
