Woman Stabbed Multiple Times Inside Movie Theater, Attacker at Large
A woman has been taken to hospital after she was stabbed multiple times inside the Palladium movie theater in San Antonio, Texas, police said.
The attack occurred at 11.06 p.m. on Saturday, at the Santikos Entertainment Palladium, an upscale movie theater in the north of the city.
The 32-year-old victim was walking out of the theater when a man came up behind her and stabbed her multiple times before running out the back door, police said.
The woman was taken by emergency services to University Hospital, in critical condition, officials said. Her condition is stable.
The investigation is ongoing and no arrests have been made. Investigators said that although there were no witnesses to the attack, they did get a description of the suspect after trawling through surveillance footage.
San Antonio police told Newsweek that they believed the suspect was a man in his twenties.
According to the NeighborhoodScout website, citing FBI crime data, the Texan city has one of the highest rates of crime for a city of its size in the U.S.
San Antonio scores four on the crime index, meaning it's safer than 4 percent of U.S. cities.
In 2019, more than 11,000 violent crimes were recorded there, according to FBI data, amounting to a 7.15 crime rate per 1,000 residents. The crime rate for the whole of Texas stood at 4.19 and the national median crime rate was 4.0.
There were 105 murders in the Texan city in 2019. There were 1,636 recorded instances of rape, 1,966 instances of robbery, and 7,356 logged cases of assault, still according to NeighborhoodScout.
Property crime is also prevalent in the city. In San Antonio, a person's chance of becoming a victim of property crime is one in 23, according to NeighborhoodScout. San Antonio was also found to have one of the highest rates of motor vehicle theft in the United States.
Community groups are trying to help curb the spike in crime in San Antonio.
KSAT reported on May 26 that Last Chance Ministries Pastor Jimmy Robles is putting out a call to churches and organizations to unite forces to stop gun violence in the city. The pastor leads a group of volunteers who visit neighborhoods prone to crime to attempt to limit the culture of violence.
Robles and other community organizations such as Stand Up SA are also encouraging people who have a connection to these neighborhoods to get involved and prevent further crime.
