Woman stabs Four in Southern Calif. Target store
May 03 2010
The displayed police booking photo released by the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department, on Monday May 3, 2010, shows Layla Rosetta Trawick, from Antioch, Calif., after her arrest this afternoon for stabbing three women and one man at a Target store located in West Hollywood, Calif.
WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif.— The woman who stabbed four people with butcher knives in a busy Target store Monday afternoon was arrested when an off-duty sheriff's deputy pulled his gun and told the woman to get on the ground as screaming shoppers fled the building.
Layla Trawick used a butcher's knife and a carving knife to attack her victims, using both knives at the same time _ one in each hand _ and slashing in a downward arc like in the movies sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said.
"She was literally walking up and down the aisles slashing people," he said.
A mother holding her baby was stabbed in the neck and taken to the hospital, where she was in stable condition, Whitmore said. The baby was not injured and all four victims are expected to recover.
A witness said she heard someone screaming, "There is no witness protection program!" amid growing chaos as shoppers lost it.
I don't know what she meant but she was yelling that over and over at the top of her lungs, according to a freelance photographer from West Hollywood, who also heard the deputy tell the woman to drop to the floor. That's when things got really chaotic and started falling over, according to the witness.
The photog said she dropped her basket and ran across the store to the women's section, to hide behind the clothing.
"From the moment the screaming started it was about five minutes. But it felt longer than that," she said.
A Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Clay Grant Jr., said he was getting some things from the store when people around him started running and screaming.
Grant pulled his gun, identified himself as a cop and ordered the woman to drop the knives. She ran away as he chased her from aisle to aisle.
The deputy was wearing a white T-shirt, camouflage shorts and running shoes so several shoppers mistook him for a gunman, creating even greater panic, according to another sheriff's deputy.
Grant followed Trawick from aisle to aisle, like a killer stalking his prey, until she turned and waved the knives at him from above her head, he said.
But he decided not to shoot because he didn't feel his life was endangered and didn't want to go through an internal affairs investigation. So he again ordered her to drop the knives and finally she complied.
"I was more concerned about the knife, more than what she was saying," Grant said. "Her facial expression was someone who was lost, confused, didn't know exactly where they were."
With the assistance of private security guards who probably were on break during the incident, Trawick was arrested. She is being held on $1 million bail on suspicion of attempted murder. Investigators were trying to determine whether the 34-year-old Antioch woman got the knives in the store. No one could explain why this was important. Trawick allegedly told one of the private security guards she was practicing for an upcoming remake of Kill Bill, and would replace Uma Thurman as the star.
Grant talked to reporters at a sheriff's station later, where he was modest. He said he was just doing what he's trained to do. This is something that happens everyday in West Hollywood, according to Grant.
Whitmore said surveillance video cameras captured the stabbings, but the tape hasn't been released yet. Private security guards, who were probably on break at the time, wanted to view the tape first, to get their stories straight.
Grant's boss praised him and said he was just John Q. Public, doing his shopping and preventing mass murder at the same time.
His boss also said Grant was authorized to have a weapon in the store because that place is a zoo and anything can happen there.
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