A high school sophomore described how she saw her schoolmate collapse with a knife wound during Wednesday's stabbing spree in Murrysville, Pa., and then tried to keep him conscious by talking to him about the spring dance.
"We're going to go to prom and have so much fun and you're going to be OK," Kristen Beard said she told her injured friend.
Beard, 16, said she was in the hallway at Franklin Regional High School when she saw suspect Alex Hribal — a sophomore she had known since she was in preschool — running down the hall.
"I thought there was some roughhousing going on," she recalled.
But the sophomore quickly realized something much worse was unfolding around her.
"When I turned, I saw a kid gushing blood, and when I turned the other way I saw blood all over the walls and floor," she said.
"And then I looked again and I saw Alex running and he had a knife in each hand," she said.
She watched as the stabber ran past her friend, "and when I looked back, I saw [him] fall."
"He said, 'Help, I'm hurt,'" Beard said.
She tried to pull him into a classroom to safety and couldn't, but a teacher came to the rescue.
Beard said she was left in the hallway, which was eerily almost empty, and saw Hribal fiddling with the fire alarm, which was reportedly triggered by another student during the mayhem.
She said the two made eye contact and then the boy ran off.
"He said, 'Help, I'm hurt.'"
Beard then went into the classroom where her friend and two other wounded students were being tended to.
Her friend had a wound to the lower back. She held his hand and tried to comfort him by talking about their plans for the prom.
"He nodded his head a little bit," Beard said.
Another student in the room was even worse off.
"He was throwing up and coming in and out of consciousness and had a very severe wound to the stomach," she said.
Beard said that when the students were evacuated, she had to be pulled away from her friend.
The FBI interviewed her and other students, so she did not go to the hospital, but she said family have told her that while he lost a kidney in the attack, he is expected to pull through.
"I'm still in shock," she said.
Alex Hribal was charged Wednesday evening with two dozen felony counts.