Kenyan man in Minnesota charged with stabbing hospital worker in the head

Posted by Jambo 

Another Minnesota Security Hospital assault by a patient sent a counselor to River’s Edge Hospital, after the counselor was stabbed in the head several times with a pen.

The 22-year-old patient, Leon Onyango Opiacha, was charged Thursday as a result of the June 1 incident. He faces three felony assault charges and another gross misdemeanor assault charge after stabbing a Security Hospital counselor, who needed two staples to close one of four wounds to his head. The staff member was also wounded in the left arm.

n the June 1 incident, the patient charged the security counselor when other staff members had temporarily moved out of sight, according to the complaint filed by the St. Peter Police Department, who originally were called to assist. To protect himself, the staff member ducked and went to his knees, suffering four wounds to his head and the other to his arm before other security counselors pulled the patient away from the victim, who “crawled away from the scene of the assault.”

A special investigator from the Minnesota Department of Human Services was called in to assist in the incident, interviewing staff members and the patient. In interviews, Opiacha indicated he assaulted the security counselor because he “intended to go to prison.”

But Opiacha was also charged with felony terroristic threats from a separate incident one month later at the hospital. In a July 1 incident, after receiving medications, Opiacha asked staff members, “Why wouldn’t they charge me? I poked that guy up?”

And upon hearing that he was being moved to a different unit, Opiacha threatened to kill another patient, again hoping it would land him in prison.

“I’d rather be in prison,” Opiacha was reported to have said. “You watch, it will only take a few seconds.”

Opiacha was committed to the St. Peter facility as “mentally ill and dangerous” a result of an August 2012 domestic assault, according to the criminal complaint.

He is scheduled for an Aug. 18 hearing in Nicollet County District Court.

-southernminn.com