Campus Attacker Said Republicans 'Safe': Witness

Witnesses say a man armed with a machete attacked students at a university in Kentucky after asking their political affiliation. The Lexington Herald-Leader reports the suspect—identified by police as 19-year-old Mitchell Adkins—entered a coffee shop on the Transylvania University campus Friday morning with a bag full of knives and a machete. Tristan Reynolds says he was in the cafe with 30 to 40 other students when the suspect announced, "The day of reckoning has come." Reynolds says the suspect asked a man in the cafe his political affiliation, telling him, "You are safe" when he identified himself as a Republican.

Police say Adkins attacked two women, at least one of them with a machete, the Washington Post reports. One of the women was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries; the other was treated at the scene. Campus security quickly detained Adkins, who was hospitalized for "self-inflicted injuries." Adkins has been charged with assault and wanton endangerment. He's a former Transylvania University student, having left the school in 2015. According to WKYT, the same year he left the university he wrote a piece on BuzzFeed complaining that conservatives are discriminated against at liberal arts colleges. (More Kentucky stories.)