STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

I live in NYC now, but this is the mall i grew up going to(got makeup done for prom, etc). This is deep suburbia, like ppl have horses, and I am SHOCKED! it's Nordstrom for godssake! Scary Scary world!

Double-stabbing causes 'mayhem' at mall

Thursday, May 26, 2005 Posted: 5:36 AM EDT (0936 GMT)

(CNN) -- A shopper at a Nordstrom department store said the scene was "just mayhem," after a woman stabbed two other women Wednesday night at a mall in Bethesda, Maryland, police said.

The women's injuries were described as serious but non-life threatening by Montgomery County Police spokesman Derek Baliles. The attacks occurred at the Westfield Montgomery Mall.

"It was just mayhem -- people just running everywhere," a shopper told CNN affiliate WJLA. "It was the craziest thing I have ever seen."

Another shopper said, "Everybody in the store was screaming."

An off-duty FBI agent who witnessed the second stabbing on an escalator, traveling from the third to the second floor, drew his weapon and took the attacker into custody without incident, Baliles said.

The first stabbing took place in the shoe section of the third floor, Baliles said.

Two witnesses said the woman knifed on the escalator was stabbed in the back.

"When I looked up, there was someone basically riding the escalator down. The suspect just came up and just stabbed her," a young man said. "She had a gash from basically the left side of her back to the right side. It was very, very bloody."

One the victims made her way to the parking garage, where people tried to help her, a woman said. "She seemed confused, because it was random. She said she didn't know why this happened to her."

The suspect, believed to be in her 40s, was not identified, and it was unclear whether she had more than one knife.

Baliles said police didn't know the motive.

Employees and customers began calling police at 6:55 p.m. to report the first stabbing, Baliles said.