A mentally disturbed man who was inexplicably released from a hospital went on a bizarre stabbing rampage yesterday that left two dead and others wounded.
The bloodshed only ended when an off-duty sheriff shot and killed the attacker.
The assailant in Tuesday night’s attack was identified as Arthur DaRosa, of Taunton. Officials said they are searching for a motive.
DaRosa’s sister and father said he had claimed that the devil was trying to make him do things, the Boston Herald reported.
Kerri Devries said her younger brother had battled depression for years and was hospitalized as recently as Monday.
“He told them how depressed he was and how he didn’t want to live anymore and they still let him leave,” Devries told the Herald.
DaRosa’s father said he visited his son in the hospital Monday night and was surprised when he showed up at the family’s home Tuesday morning.
“He needed help, so we tried very much to help,” the elder Arthur DaRosa told the newspaper. “Why did they release him this morning? That’s the question. He came over to get his keys to go to work. He was good. Normal. No attitude. He was calm.”
The elder DaRosa said the last he heard was that his son went to his own daughter’s soccer game Tuesday afternoon.
Authorities said the rampage began when the 28-year-old DaRosa crashed a car at around 7 p.m. outside of a house in the city, about 40 miles south of Boston. He walked inside the home and stabbed two women. An 80-year-old was taken to a hospital, where she later died. The other woman was being treated for life-threatening injuries.
DaRosa then drove to the Silver City Galleria mall, where he crashed into the front of a Macy’s department store, authorities said.
Bristol County District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn III said when DaRosa got out of the vehicle, he assaulted a number of people inside Macy’s before making his way to Bertucci’s restaurant.
Once inside the restaurant, he stabbed two people, including a 56-year-old man who later died, Quinn said. An off-duty sheriff’s deputy intervened and shot DaRosa once. DaRosa was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
“Tragedy has certainly hit the city of Taunton hard here this evening,” Mayor Tom Hoye said late Tuesday.
He praised the sheriff’s deputy for stopping the attacks.
“If it wasn’t for his heroic actions, there could have been more loss of life here this evening,” the mayor said.
Witnesses described the scene at the mall as chaotic.
Alex Mace and Jenn Breault told WBZ-TV that they had just arrived when they spotted a girl hiding in the bushes outside of Bertucci’s.
“You could just tell she was scared for her life,” Mace told the station. “She was kind of hiding behind a bush with her head down.”
The girl told the couple what she had just seen.
“She saw a guy walk in and he grabbed a chair to hurt one of the waitresses and she saw him stab the waitress,” Breault said.
Authorities did not immediately identify the victims or what connections they may have had, if any, to the suspect.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Guns save lives.
Support the NRA.
AND do NOT vote for Adolph ‘Hell’ary as she will try to leave us all defenseless and sitting ducks for crazies like this.
It’s beginning to look like the only thing we’re going to be able to do for Hillary is bring her cookies on visiting day; take a look at Judge Andrew Napolitano describing the fix she’s in. She’s going Bye Byue.
I hope so !
You can thank the Government and the ACLU and the Hospital on this one. As you know it’s against the Mentally Ill to be put into the Hospital or to have to take Medicines against their will. The least the hospital could of done is to keep him in for 3 days for observation, test and to try to get him on something to help him. Now people are injured and dead including him. No one wins. Sad
Amen. If only you had armed citizens this poor crazy man could have been stopped far sooner. Thank God there was a policeman around to finally stop this killing spree!
The Boston Herald is reporting today that the alleged assailant was admitted to a local hospital’s psych ward the day before, but released. Taunton is an industrial city close to 40 miles south of Boston. During WWII it had Camp Miles Standish, which was one of the U.S.’s largest camps for troops departing for Europe. That site was seriously considered as a possible location for the UN close to 70 years back.
When seconds count-the police are only minutes away. If more people had been armed, this insane man would have been stopped sooner.
You are so right !!!! When are we going to wake up !?!?!??!
What is wrong with our doctors ????? To let this person out ?????
They closed all the institutions for these kind of people to save tax dollars years ago. They have to be reopened and properly maintained.
Amen
Well we see how much the family blamed the hospital for his release….but–they could have signed him into the psych ward as in having him committed to the hospital for his own welfare not to mention others.. am I wrong here?
Yeah its always the family’s fault ……Are they professionals ? Do they know how deeply disturb their son/brother was ? I guess the answer is NO .So WHY the hospital dind’t transfer him to Psych ward .WHY the proffessionals relesased him in general population known how many cases like this are every year .WHY family has to make that decission and who do you think is going voluntarly into the psych ward ? ..Obama care at work !!! A mentaly disturb individual will find a weapon ,stop chasing the gun /knife issue .Hospitals need to take this seriuosly ,not as superficially .
What’s wrong? P.C.
Oh yea, blame the Dr., Got news for ya, some things get broken and can’t be fixed. The off duty officer did the man and society a favor.
OK bleeding heart LIBERALS-let’s hear your reason for prosecuting the officer! Please use common sense before acting stupidly as you usually do. Good Job-praise to the officer!!
Maybe Obama needs to ban knifes to. Somebody should have been CHL could’ve ended sooner
Most municipalities have laws about the size of knife you can carry in a public place before its considered a weapon. But, this guy obviously had a relapse of his mental illness, assuming he was well at the time he was released… which is doubtful, and wasn’t concerned about any such laws.
Hillary will now want knife control…
I like to point out it was an off duty armed police officer that took this scum bag down, not a rape whistle.
Dear president obama:
*
It is high time to out law knives, or at least make people register them and pay a tax on them to make it more difficult to own a knife.
We have: on airplanes, in government buildings, schools, lots of commercial places . . . which, of course, means anybody going into these buildings for any reason have to leave their knives behind; in the case of pedestrians, that means leaving them at home . . . and don’t get me started on all the situations where you would use a knife.
Was riding on a subway… city doesn’t matter because the “offender my be identifiable due to the city”. Saw a guy who I used to hike with in a hiking club. Man was wearing a winter coat over a chef’s white jacket. I greeted him and spoke briefly with him. I wanted his phone number for future contact. He opened his “brief case” to get a piece of paper. In his “brief case” were his toque, some notebooks (the paper) and… his array of chef’s knives. Most chef’s own their own and due to their cost don’t let them lay around. A lady sitting on a seat at a right angle to him saw the knives and ran down the car toward the emergency stop screaming, “He’s got a knife!”… over and over. Some guy in military BDUs subdued the woman and explained that he was also wearing a chef’s coat. She settled down and I moved away just in case he decided to carve me into some sort of elaborate table top decoration. I was surprised that at the next stop, his, that he wasn’t arrest by the transit police but he wasn’t. Of course the flip side of this is what happened in the mall in Mass. Perhaps he should be required to keep his case locked at all times when not in a kitchen….. At the time it was funny but not now.
I take it you don’t understand sarcasm when you read it.
*
All the things you pointed out were done under Bush, for good reason.
This story did not apply to you posting.
I can see that our liberals will be crying for knife control so they can use this as a rallying point for their failures in other areas. So it was a mentally ill man that was responsible for this carnage. Maybe the liberals will begin to see that we have a problem that they are choosing to ignore and was created by one of their institutions : the ACLU!
No one is ignoring mental illness. However, compassion insists that a hospitalized person is released as soon a possible. They are NOT being jailed for being sick so as soon as they are well they should and are released. That is as it should be. It is a shame that this poor unfortunate man was killed by an off duty police officer. Had the officer approached him with compassion this situation may have ended on a different note. How’s that for the liberal line?!?
It stinks
Looks like Massachusetts’ gun laws are paying off. Now they need to outlaw knifes.
Mr.Bumfelder, Your remarks sound like you should be comitted to an institution.