An Australian student remains in custody after attacking four people during class in an Austrailian University. According to The Irish Examiner, Australian Federal Police said that students at the Australian National University, Canberra tried to restrain him from attacking the teacher but got attacked in the process.
Detective Superintendent Ben Cartwright said the students showed "incredible bravery" to protect their lecturer during the brawl. One student managed to wrestle the bat from the attacker, whose motivations for the attack are unclear and has no previous record with the police.
A student of the University, Max Claessens, said his friend was in the classroom when the attack happened. The attacker waited until class was in motion before pulling out the bat.
One of the students just randomly out of the blue got up with a bat, struck out at two or three students, before apparently going for the teacher...And obviously people were in a bit of shock so they ran out to get help before the guy - who wasn't coming down and was going a bit crazy, to be honest - was restrained...It was just out of the blue. Nothing seemed strange about him...I'm a bit surprised to be honest. I didn't expect something like this to happen. You can't exactly anticipate someone picking up a cricket bat in a statistics class.
According to witnesses, the assailant was calmly escorted from the building by two police officers as a man on a stretcher, believed to be the teacher, was carried away from the scene with a head wound.
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All four victims were taken to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries, including broken bones. The university said counselling services were being provided to anyone affected by the attack.
