Texas college stabbing suspect waives court hearing

Read more from CNN affiliates KHOU and KPRC.

Story highlights

NEW: Stabbing suspect Dylan Quick waives right to court appearance Thursday

NEW: Quick told police of more violent fantasies, search warrant affidavit says

He is charged with three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon

Quick has had a psychological evaluation, the Harris County district attorney says

CNN  — 

As victims of a stabbing attack at Lone Star College near Houston recover physically and psychologically, the suspect in the incident waived his right to a court hearing Thursday, CNN affiliate KHOU said.

Dylan Quick, 20, had been scheduled for a probable cause hearing, but he waived his right and did not appear in court, the station said. He remains in jail and under a suicide watch, his attorney said, according to KHOU.

He is charged with three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in Tuesday’s attack, in which 14 people were wounded – at least some of them with a utility knife.

Two of the 14 people attacked remained hospitalized Wednesday, while others were out, dealing with the aftermath of the attack.

“I keep going over it. I see him coming at me,” stabbing victim Andrea Cervantes told CNN affiliate KPRC.

According to authorities, Quick attacked people on two floors of the school’s health science center Tuesday.

Witnesses to the stabbings described a chaotic scene as bleeding victims collapsed to the ground and students and teachers ran for cover.

“It just seemed like he was just going around, basically getting whoever was more open and easiest for him to reach,” witness Cassie Foe told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Tuesday.

The attacker was aiming at people’s necks and faces, student Melody Vinton told KHOU. One woman had what appeared to be the blade of a box cutter sticking out of her cheek, she said.

Witness Steven Maida said he and other students chased Quick down and pinned him to the ground until authorities arrived.

After his arrest, Quick told police he had had fantasies of stabbing people since he was 8, Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia told reporters. He had been planning Tuesday’s attacks “for some time,” Garcia said.

A search warrant affidavit said that Quick told police that he also had fantasized about “cutting off people’s faces and wearing them as masks” and about necrophilia and cannibalism. He also told police that he had researched mass stabbings, the affidavit said.

Quick underwent a psychological evaluation Wednesday, according to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.

Three people hurt in the stabbings were discharged from a Houston hospital Wednesday, while two others remained there in good condition, hospital spokeswoman Kathryn Klein said.

The campus was shut down, and it reopened Wednesday, a day after the attack.

Quick has intense ties to the school.

Born deaf, he received a cochlear implant at age 7. The implant gave him the ability to hear, but he then had to learn how to speak. His mother home-schooled him and got him involved in Lone Star’s library programs when he was a teen, according to CNN affiliate KPRC.

A profile on a student blog recounts how joining a campus book club changed his life.

He rarely spoke during his first two years in the library’s teen activities program, according to the profile.

“But after those two years it was if a floodgate had opened up and Dylan became loquacious, sharing his analyses of literature and socializing with his book club comrades,” the blog article says.

“His room at home, he explains, barely contains his 1,000+ collection of books. In the future he plans to build and host an online international book club to connect people of all ages from around the world,” the profile says.

The teen book club on campus encourages youths to enroll in the community college after high school graduation, and Quick did.

Some faculty members said Quick was a good student there, Lone Star College-CyFair President Audre Levy told reporters Wednesday.

Also, staff members at the county library branch on campus, where Quick worked part-time for about a year, “had fond things to say of him,” Levy said.

“So many are surprised” that he was the suspect, she said.

Quick was planning to finish his associate degree at the college and then transfer to the University of Houston to study accounting.

Tuesday’s incident came more than two months after three people were wounded in a shooting at a different Lone Star College campus – the North Harris campus in Houston.

CNN’s Ed Lavandera, Joe Sutton, Jason Morris, Dave Alsup, Chandler Friedman, Paul Caron, Chuck Johnston, Ashley Fantz and Jason Hanna contributed to this report.