BOSTON, Oct. 15 (UPI) -- A homeless man described by his lawyer as a paranoid schizophrenic, stabbed two park rangers on the historic Boston Common, police said.
Bodio Hutchinson, 34, was arrested Tuesday in the neighboring Public Gardens. Police said they found a knife in a pond in the park.
Hutchinson, who has a history of violent attacks, was being held in lieu of $1 million bail.
One of the victims, a sergeant who had been a park ranger for more than 20 years, was reported to be in critical condition at Massachusetts General Hospital. Sources in law enforcement told the Boston Globe the attack cut a femoral artery and identified the ranger as Albert Hurd.
Assistant District Attorney Lynn Feigenbaum said that Hurd and James Lunnin, who became a ranger this year, responded to reports late Tuesday afternoon of a man on the Common waving a knife. They used pepper spray in an attempt to subdue Hurd, who stabbed each of them five times.
When police tried to arrest him, Hurd ran to the Public Gardens, calling on the officers to shoot him, Feigenbaum said. He allegedly tossed a knife with a 5-inch blade into a pond.
At a hearing, Hutchinson's lawyer, Shannon Lopez, called the high bail "egregious." She asked the judge to set bail at $5,000, citing her client's long history of mental illness.
"He struggles every day to know what's his reality," she said.
