Hospital Employee Stabbing Sparks Manhunt—Suspect at Large

A manhunt is underway after a hospital employee was stabbed on Monday evening, with the suspect fleeing and remaining at large.

The attack unfolded outside the Mission Community Hospital in Panorama City, a neighborhood in Los Angeles.

Hospital spokesperson Craig Garner revealed a male hospital worker had been knifed outside the premises, according to the Los Angeles Times.

"The employee was transferred in stable condition to another facility," he added.

Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers were called to the scene just after 6:41 p.m., LAPD officer Annie Hernandez said. They tended to the injured employee and launched a search for his attacker but have yet to catch him.

Fire crews arrived at 7 p.m. and took the stabbing victim to a trauma center, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Hernandez described the suspect as a Latino male, who was around 40 to 50 years old. He is said to be 5 feet 7 inches tall, weighing around 140 pounds. The suspect was said to be dressed in black—wearing a hoodie and a hat—and carrying a black backpack.

It was unclear whether the attack was random or whether the two men were known to each other.

Newsweek has reached out to the LAPD for further information.

Speaking at the scene, ABC 7 reporter Jory Rand said the worker was actually stabbed just inside the entrance to the hospital, where colleagues frantically worked on him on the floor of the lobby to tend to his wounds.

The attacker reportedly fled on foot and the hospital entrance was sealed off with police tape as the hospital was put on lockdown while police searched the grounds for the attacker.

The lockdown was later lifted and the hospital had fully reopened by 11 p.m.

ABC 7 news crews in a helicopter overhead filmed a patient being taken on a stretcher and loaded into a fire department vehicle; the report stated this was the victim being moved from the emergency room of the hospital and taken to the trauma center at Northridge Hospital four miles away.

Cardiologist Dr James Higgins, who works at Mission Community Hospital, told CBS News: "Somebody came up and one of the employees—either as he was coming out or going in—somebody came up to him, said something to him, and then stabbed him. Everybody jumped in [to help], they brought aside, and took him some place to take care of him.

"It's just scary. And it's a really sad thing that it happened at a place where you really try to help people and save them. And instead it's almost like the opposite is occurring right in front of the hospital. It just shows you sometimes, what's going on in the world."

The incident comes just months after a doctor and two nurses were knifed at another LA hospital, when an attacker went on a stabbing spree at the Encino Hospital Medical Center in June.