The Associated Press
CHICAGO, Ill. — A convicted killer tried to escape from a Chicago hospital in leg shackles and stabbed a nurse and three other people with a metal shank before he was caught on a bus outside, authorities said.
All four victims survived without serious injuries.
The inmate, Willis Reese, had been convicted three days earlier for a 2002 contract killing.
On Thursday, a dermatologist’s nurse was examining him for a skin condition when Reese pulled out a thin piece of metal with a sharpened tip about 4 to 5 inches long and stabbed the man, sheriff’s office spokesman Bill Cunningham said.
Reese also stabbed a corrections officer and a bystander who tried to help the victims, then fled John H. Stroger Hospital in leg shackles, Cunningham said. He said Reese got onto a shuttle bus in the driveway and stabbed the driver before authorities grabbed him.
Officials were trying to determine how Reese got the piece of metal. He had been held in a maximum-security wing of the Cook County Jail, Cunningham said.
Reese and a co-defendant had been convicted Monday in the fatal shooting of a 37-year-old man in Chicago for a promised $10,000 payoff, according to Cook County state’s attorney’s office spokeswoman Tandra Simonton.