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Updated 18 minutes ago
A former Franklin Regional High School student accused of attacking classmates and a security guard in a 2014 knife rampage is scheduled to stand trial in August, a judge ruled Tuesday.
Westmoreland County Common Pleas Judge Christopher Feliciani tentatively set the trial for Alex Hribal to begin Aug. 7 for the start of jury selection.
Hribal, 19, is charged with 21 counts each of attempted murder and aggravated assault as well as a weapons offense. He is accused of using two kitchen knives to slash and stab victims as he ran down a school hallway before the start of class on April 9, 2014 .
Several of the students were seriously injured in the attack.
Defense attorney Pat Thomassey, during a pretrial conference Tuesday, said he may seek to have a jury selected in another county due to publicity generated by the case.
“I haven't decided to file that motion or not, but I think it would be rather difficult to pick a jury in this county,” Thomassey said.
District Attorney John Peck said he will oppose such a request, noting that publicity about the case has waned in the three years since Hribal was arrested.
“We've had cases with far more publicity than this one and we've had no difficulty picking juries in those cases,” Peck said.
The case has moved forward slowly as his attorneys first attempted to transfer the prosecution to the juvenile court division because Hribal was 16 at the time the incident. Because he was charged as an adult, if he is convicted of all 43 felony offenses he faces, he could be sentenced to more than 800 years in prison. A juvenile court conviction would have kept Hribal in custody only until his 21st birthday.
Thomassey said no plea bargain negotiations have been held.
Feliciani last month denied a defense request to allow Hribal to plead guilty but mentally ill. Thomassey previously presented testimony from mental health experts who diagnosed his client as schizophrenic and psychotic at the time of the assaults. Such a finding would have allowed Hribal to serve a portion of his sentence in a mental health facility.
Defense attorneys have said they will ask jurors to find Hribal guilty but mentally ill, which Peck said Tuesday constitutes a “second bite of the apple.”
Peck previously argued that Hribal had a conscious desire to harm classmates and deliberately designed the attack to resemble a 1999 school shooting in Colorado.
Rich Cholodofsky is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724-830-6293 or rcholodofsky@tribweb.com.
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