How stabbings are different from other homicidal attacks

TORONTO – The worst mass murder in Calgary history has shocked residents as details emerge of five people—all in their 20s—stabbed to death at a house party before the suspect—also in his early 20s—fled the scene, leaving one young man dying on the front lawn.

Just hours later a Brampton, Ont. high school was in lockdown Tuesday afternoon after a 17-year-old student was taken to hospital with stabbing-related injuries.

The attacks come less than a week after a Toronto man was arrested for stabbing four people in an office building, which happened the same day as 19 Pittsburgh students were injured after a 16-year-old armed with two knives went on a slashing spree.

But one criminologist says there’s no evidence of a trend, and Statistics Canada data backs him up.

“Most kinds of crime have been declining over time over the last 20 years,” said Simon Fraser University’s School of Criminology director Neil Boyd. “It’s not uncommon, though, to occasionally get a spate of these kinds of crimes.”

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Boyd said homicide data in Canada has been kept since the 1960s, and percentages of types of killings have been consistent: One third of all killings have been stabbings, one third have been shootings (a combination of rifles and handguns), and one third have been beatings or strangulations.

Because stabbings are a fairly rare occurrence, they tend to garner a lot of attention from media and public in general, said Boyd.

He declined to speculate on what the choice of stabbing might indicate about the psychological profile of a suspect, but said knives are unlike guns in terms of access.

“Knives are unlike guns in that they can be used for all sorts of legitimate purposes, so access to a knife is a much easier kind of thing for people to contemplate than access to a gun,” he said.

“When you look at the kinds of knives used in stabbings – they run the gamut in terms of they’re not necessarily purchased and used specifically for the purpose of trying to kill somebody.”

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He said this could potentially make it harder to notice warning signs in the suspect.