LOS ANGELES – Authorities say a UCLA student who was stabbed in the throat by a fellow student remains hospitalized but is expected to recover. Meanwhile, detectives are trying to discover a motive for the attack.
Los Angeles police detective Mike Pelletier said Friday that Damon D. Thompson used a knife to stab the victim several times during a lab session. Authorities have not released the woman's identity but say she and Thompson were not romantically involved.
Thompson was arrested shortly after the attack and booked for investigation of attempted murder. He remained jailed on $1 million bail. Pelletier said he will be arraigned Tuesday.
Pelletier said the knife was found at the scene of the stabbing, in a chemistry lab on the sixth floor of Young Hall.
Detectives are interviewing witnesses to try to determine a motive.
UCLA spokesman Phil Hampton says the 20-year-old victim remained hospitalized Friday. Los Angeles police spokesman Richard French says the woman is expected to recover.
Blood gushed from the student's neck and formed a puddle on the floor of a UCLA lab as instructors struggled to stanch the wound.
The victim had staggered across the hall, where two staff members quickly applied pressure and put gauze on the neck. Stunned students watched in horror.
"Her eyes rolled back in her head, I called out her name and told her to stay with me. She wasn't really responding. I think she could hear me," said chemistry lecturer Stacie Nakamoto, who had just arrived when the victim was brought in from the lab across the hall.
Thompson's relatives said he is an only child who left his mother's home in Belize two years ago to attend UCLA.
Los Angeles police Detective Alan Behnke said Thompson did not have any previous criminal history and cooperated with authorities. When police arrived, Thompson was waiting for them in an office after turning himself in, Behnke said.
Cyril Baida, a teaching assistant who was working in a lab across the hall, said he did not know the victim or the suspect but was told that they were lab partners or had worked together in a small group on projects in their lab section.
Classes at the lab were canceled Friday.
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