The violent attack on nurses at St. John’s Hospital in Maplewood, MN, was caught on surveillance video that soon was released to the public. The images are disturbing, particularly because the staff members are so defenseless against their attacker.
The videotape shows Charles Emmett Logan, 68, of St. Paul, MN, appear suddenly at the nurses’ station at 2 a.m. He was swinging a metal pole that he took from his hospital bed. Logan had been hospitalized with episodes of confusion and paranoia.
Staffers immediately try to escape from Logan’s wild swings of the metal pole. They scramble to get away from him and through the doors leading off the unit. As they flee, several staffers try to secure the door behind them and isolate the attacker, but Logan bursts through and makes forceful overhead swings at two nurses who had fallen to the floor.
Four nurses were injured before Logan ran outside the hospital. Ramsey County Sheriff’s deputies chased Logan and caught up with him three blocks away. Deputies first electrically stunned Logan and then tackled him. When Logan became unresponsive after being handcuffed, deputies took him back to St. John’s, where he was pronounced dead.
The four nurses injured by the attacker ranged in age from 22 to 40. They suffered a range of injuries including a collapsed lung, a fractured wrist, and multiple cuts and bruises.
A report on the attack by CNN, which includes the security camera video, is available online at http://tinyurl.com/ksy4y4c..
