'I sprinted out of the building': Franklin Regional reflects on attack 10 years later

Kate Berry heeded the fire alarm, briskly walked down a stairwell and opened the doors into a hallway at Franklin Regional High School when she encountered a knife-wielding student.

She was face to face with Alex Hribal.

“I remember … seeing him and thinking like, ‘Oh, why is he walking this way? This isn’t the exit,’ ” said Berry of Murrysville. “Then it just happened in an instant.”

Hribal slashed her across the lip and cheek with a kitchen knife.

Berry was 17 then. Tuesday marks 10 years since the incident.

As students mingled and chatted in the hallways 20 minutes before the start of classes on the morning of April 9, 2014, Hribal, a 16-year-old sophomore, went room to room with an 8- to 10-inch knife in each hand, slashing and stabbing 20 students and security guard John Resetar. Everyone survived.

Hribal was sentenced in 2018 to serve up to 60 years in state prison.

“His face just looked like there was nothing,” Berry said. “That makes me really sad.”

Ten years later, the Franklin Regional School District and the communities in Murrysville, Delmont and Export have largely recovered. But they haven’t forgotten.

“We pause to honor our students, faculty and first responders,” the district said in a statement Monday. “Their selfless actions on that day exemplify our community’s spirit, strength and unity.”

To this day, every time Berry hears a fire alarm, she has a physiological response.

After she was slashed, Berry said, she started running until she was able to tell a teacher what had happened.

“My body definitely went into shock,” she said. “I wasn’t feeling the pain.”

She remembers sitting on the stairs in front of the school as paramedics arrived and realizing that she could have died.

“I truly met the real Jesus that day, and that has changed the course of my life,” said Berry, who is now youth ministry director of North Way Christian Community in Oakland. “I just knew God was like, ‘I have you.’ ”

She said she hasn’t been left with any trauma from that day and holds no grudges.

“Jesus saved me physically and spiritually that day,” Berry said. “I definitely feel like I learned … you can prepare all you want, (but) if somebody’s going to come and hurt you, they’re going to come and hurt you.”

Berry, who attended Hribal’s trial, said she didn’t even know who he was when the incident happened.

“I genuinely truly hope for him to come to know the Lord some day,” she said.

‘A lot of mass confusion’

Murrysville police Chief Tom Seefeld can still recall the chaotic scene: panicked students sprinting, fire alarms blaring.

What he witnessed 10 years ago at Franklin Regional High School became the most impactful event of his 43-year law enforcement career.

“I remember pulling onto the school grounds, seeing kids run from the building,” he said. “I saw a lot of mass confusion and somewhat hysteria.”

Seefeld, 65, of Plum has been Murrysville’s chief for 21 years. He still gets emotional when he recalls that morning.

“I’ve seen a lot in my career, but that’s probably the most impactful event I’ve ever been involved in.” he said.

Seefeld was among the first to arrive at the high school after receiving a panicked radio call.

Though many don’t want to rehash the details of April 9, Seefeld said he believes the incident and the way the district handled the aftermath demonstrated the community’s resilience.

“It’s something you can’t erase,” he said. “I think it’s a story worth talking about from time to time how the community came through it all.”

Initial response

Celine Halt, who was 16 and a sophomore at the time, was in the science wing that morning.

“I kind of saw the knives in his hand,” Halt, 26, of Murrysville recalled. “My best friend at the time, (we) locked eyes with each other, and we’re like, ‘We need to go,’ and I sprinted out of the building.”

Everyone calls Murrysville “the bubble,” she said, and nothing bad ever happens in a bubble. The events of April 9, 2014, proved it can happen anywhere.

“I remember when the fire alarm got pulled … and people are just like casually walking onto the football field, and I’m like, ‘Why aren’t you running?’ ” Halt said. “They had no clue what was going on until after.”

Halt, who is now the manager of ballpark entertainment at PNC Park, was always the kid who was scared of the dark and loud noises, she said. The incident made her terrified of returning to school.

“I think a lot of us were kind of in shock,” she said. “To this day, we all have such different coping mechanisms.”

There’s no easy way to cope with an incident like this, Halt said.

In the weeks and months after, every time she heard a noise in the hallway — even a pencil drop — she was startled.

“I always watched walking behind me,” Halt said. “I never wanted to be in the hallways alone anymore.”

Even now, she still looks behind her every 10 steps or so.

In the aftermath of the stabbings, the outpouring of love from near and far was overwhelming, former school board member Gregg Neavin said.

Franklin Regional received handwritten notes from Sandy Hook Elementary School students — where a mass shooting occurred in Newtown, Conn., in 2012.

On the night of the stabbings, Neavin said, an emergency board meeting was called.

Neavin remembers how Superintendent Gennaro Piraino’s words shook him.

“He looked at the room and said, ‘This is clearly the worst day of my career,’ and broke down,” Neavin said.

Piraino declined to comment for this story.

Hribal’s parents did not return a phone call. His attorney, Thomas Farrell, also declined to comment.

Neavin, 69, of Murrysville was on the Franklin Regional School Board for eight years. He has had three children and three stepchildren in the district.

Just weeks before the stabbings, Neavin said, the board approved about $280,000 to make doors in the schools more secure.

“If you were a teacher and wanted to lock kids in a room, you had to go out and lock it on the outside and then come in and pull the door shut,” he said.

That security and reinforcement spending ended up increasing to around $1.2 million following the incident, according to Neavin.

A safety assessment had been completed as well, which also prompted the proposed changes, according to former school board member Jeremy Samek.

Two of Samek’s five kids were attending Sloan Elementary School at the time.

“It was surreal — absolutely surreal,” he said. “It was very, very impressive how people came together in that difficult time.

“The fact that everybody survived was just an amazing blessing.”

Seeking health care

For Dr. Mark Rubino and the staff at Forbes Hospital, April 9, 2014, was the day they realized the impact of the hospital’s new trauma center.

“It really was galvanizing because everyone played a role in saving those lives,” he said.

Rubino, 67, of Murrysville, who is now the president of Forbes and Allegheny Valley Hospital, was the chief medical officer at the time of the incident.

“I can remember standing outside of the emergency room doors waiting for the first to arrive … and I remember looking back and in front of all of the trauma bays. There was assembled a team of clinicians, and it was totally quiet,” he said. “There was no emotion — everyone was waiting to do what they needed to do.”

Eight of the injured individuals were brought to Forbes, including three with life-threatening injuries, Rubino said.

“I have no doubt that because of the personnel, the equipment, the training, everything … we were able to really save the lives of those three kids,” he said.

Because Forbes is a trauma center, it had 60 units of blood available on-site, which is more than most hospitals, he said. However, Rubino said it was all used within an hour because of the severity of the injuries.

“We had to get additional blood from other places,” he said.

For Rubino, the incident quickly transitioned from professional to personal. As an obstetrician-gynecologist who had been practicing in Murrysville for more than 25 years, he knew many of the families.

“We’ve delivered so many of the kids in the community,” he said. “The community is very personal to us.”

His four children graduated from Franklin Regional before the incident.

On his way home from Forbes on April 9, he recalled stopping at Mother of Sorrows Catholic Church, where he found it filled with community members singing “Let There Be Peace on Earth.” Emotions finally kicked in.

“You can’t totally ignore the post-traumatic stress from these events,” Rubino said. “You have to be able to train an awareness that there is help for those that still may be suffering from the effects of that.”

Ten years later, he said, it’s still hard to relive those emotions.

“I think that the community was shocked by what occurred, and they needed to work through that,” Rubino said. “And I think having the psychological resources available to be able to work through the issues is something that we need to value.”

‘It wasn’t like this was a stranger’

Anthony Mannarino, a psychologist and co-founder of the Center for Traumatic Stress in Children and Adolescents at Allegheny Health Network 30 years ago, played a large role in the mental health recovery process at Franklin Regional.

Initially, Mannarino said, the center provided resources for students, teachers and families so they could understand the potential impact and danger signs to look for in people suffering from the trauma.

“There was concern about kids returning to school,” said Mannarino, who is now chair of AHN’s Psychiatry and Behavioral Health Institute. “Was it going to be scary for them? For their families? For their teachers?”

For the rest of the school year that spring, Mannarino said, therapists from the center were at Franklin Regional a few days each week with availability on a drop-in basis for students and staff.

However, he said, some students probably didn’t stop by in fear of what their classmates would think of them, referencing the stigma around mental health.

The greatest concern in mass trauma generally comes six months after the incident, he said.

“That’s the time in which the kids who kind of recover spontaneously, do. And that’s the point at which kids who are not going to recover easily begin to have more significant problems — like post-traumatic stress disorder and depression,” he said.

Because the perpetrator was a student at the high school, Mannarino said, people had many feelings.

“It wasn’t like this was a stranger who showed up at the school. … This was an actual student,” he said. “The bottom line is that it’s scarier when it’s a student because they’ve got reason to be in the building — I think it’s a little scarier for everybody that it occurred that way.”

There was some apprehension surrounding the return to school in fall 2014, he said.

Specifically, teachers mentioned that seniors had graduated and wouldn’t have to be on the school’s campus.

“Kids are moving on, but we, the teachers, are still here,” Mannarino said they told him. “We don’t feel safe. What’s the high school going to do to help ensure our safety?”

Since kids inevitably leave the school, they won’t have to deal with the certain triggers, he said.

“In contrast, the teachers and the administrative staff at the high school are going to that high school every single day,” Mannarino said. “So, it becomes a reminder, and I think for some of the teachers that was a tremendous strain — and a lot of stress because they continued to work there.”

He said the district and teachers were able to work together to ensure comfortability and security upon return.

Safety changes

In the past 10 years, Franklin Regional has increased safety and security measures in the district.

A buzz-in system was implemented for visitors to the high school, and doors were locked throughout the day.

Students had to follow a clear bag policy if they weren’t leaving their backpacks in their lockers. A bag check line was implemented each morning, according to Neavin.

The district established its own police force in 2018.

Following April 9, Seefeld said, the Murrysville Police Department implemented more officer training, fully equipped medical bags in police cruisers, training for active shooting situations and instruction on critical incidents.

Neavin said he believes Franklin Regional has made an already fairly safe school district even more safe. He cited physical security changes and mental health care, as well as keeping an eye out for certain behaviors and bullying.

There aren’t any easy answers to making a school district 100% safe, he said.

“You don’t want to live in fear, but I think it shows the importance of having some regular awareness of your surroundings and being to some degree ever vigilant because you never know,” Neavin said. “Franklin Regional is more than that incident.”

Nationwide violence

School violence can happen anywhere in America, Seefeld acknowledged, even though he never would have expected it to happen in Murrysville.

“No place is exempt from it,” he said. “Police departments throughout the nation have really stepped up training because of incidents that have happened.”

Halt said after she graduated from college, she became a substitute at the district for a few years, and the memories of April 9 were in the forefront of her mind.

“I thought to myself every single day … I’m like, ‘OK, how can I get my students out? How can I keep them safe?’ ” she said. “I’m like, ‘OK, you shouldn’t be thinking about this,’ but at the same time, I’m like … if it happened to me, it can happen to them.”

Now that she’s an adult, Halt said she has been looking down the road to when she would want to have children.

“Should I send them to public school? Do I home-school them?” she said. “I don’t want them to go through the same things that I did.”

Ultimately, Halt said she wants students to feel safe in schools.

“I’m always going to want better for the future — and especially my future children,” she said. “I don’t want to be worried every time I drop them off at school or they get on the school bus.”