Five Slashed in a “Mass Stabbing”
A Half-Mile From LA’s Olympic Stadium.
At about 10:15 on Friday night, July 10, on and around a Metro Rail pedestrian bridge at Adams Boulevard and Flower Street — two blocks from the University of Southern California — somebody started cutting people. By the time the Los Angeles Police Department finished its second count, at least five people had what the department called “severe lacerations,” some of the wounded had run to a nearby apartment complex, and the LAPD had reached for a label it does not use casually: “mass stabbing.”
Two days later, the basic facts are still moving. The victim count grew from four to at least five between the overnight reports and Saturday’s update. The suspect count grew from one to two. Neither person in custody has been named or charged, and the only explanation any outlet has published is a single LAPD phrase: an “altercation involving numerous individuals.”
The frame is what makes this a civic story. It happened the same day a FIFA World Cup quarterfinal played at SoFi Stadium, half a mile from the Coliseum that anchors the 2028 Olympics — in a city whose police force has shrunk to its smallest sworn count in roughly three decades under Mayor Karen Bass (D), in a council district whose representative, Curren Price (D), is spending 2026 awaiting trial on 12 felony corruption counts. He is presumed innocent, and his case has nothing to do with this attack — but the corridor he represents just hosted one.
- ≥5 victims — with “severe lacerations” in Friday night's attack, up from an initial count of four — an evolving LAPD count · Source: ABC7/KABC; NBC Los Angeles
- 2 in custody — up from one overnight; neither suspect named nor charged as of July 12 · Source: ABC7/KABC; NBC Los Angeles
- 8,569 — sworn LAPD officers as of June 27, 2026 — the smallest force in roughly 30 years · Source: LAPD Compstat citywide profile; Police1
- ~40/day — aggravated assaults across Los Angeles in 2026 — 7,445 year-to-date · Source: LAPD Compstat citywide profile
- 12 felony counts — pending against the district's own councilman, Curren Price (D, CD-9), in an unrelated corruption case; he is presumed innocent · Source: LA County District Attorney
Confirmed: an attack at roughly 10:15 p.m. Friday, July 10, at Adams Boulevard and Flower Street; at least five people with “severe lacerations,” per the LAPD; two people in custody; an “altercation involving numerous individuals” preceding the violence.
Evolving: the victim count (four in overnight reports, at least five by Saturday) and the suspect count (one, then two) — both LAPD figures relayed by NBC Los Angeles and ABC7 respectively, and both subject to change.
Unknown: the suspects’ names, any charges, the motive beyond a single phrase, the victims’ identities, and whether any of them are USC students.
Denied: a connection to a deadly stabbing in the same area the prior Sunday — LAPD, via NBC Los Angeles, says the two are not believed to be related.
Friday, July 10, was supposed to be a showcase day for Los Angeles. A World Cup quarterfinal kicked off at SoFi Stadium at noon, in the same summer the Coliseum’s park hosted FIFA’s official Fan Festival. Ten hours after kickoff, officers were stringing police tape across a Metro Rail pedestrian bridge at Adams Boulevard and Flower Street, where victims with knife wounds were scattered across the walkway, the street below, and a nearby apartment complex some of them had fled into.
The corner sits two blocks from USC’s campus, and the university’s Department of Public Safety responded alongside the LAPD. Several USC students were in the area when the attack happened. Whether any of the victims are students remained unknown as of Sunday — the LAPD said so plainly, and USC’s own public crime log is the checkable record to watch.
“Several USC students were in the area, and USC Public Safety also responded, but it's unknown if any of the victims are students.”
ABC7 Eyewitness News, reporting LAPD statements, July 12, 2026
Even the neighborhood’s name is contested in the coverage. ABC7 placed the attack in Exposition Park; NBC Los Angeles and KTLA placed it in University Park. Both are right, in the way Los Angeles geography usually is: Adams and Flower technically sits in University Park, just north of Exposition Park itself — the park that holds the Coliseum, the stadium already anchoring the 2028 Olympic Games, roughly half a mile from the bridge.
The public record on this attack is two snapshots, and they don’t quite match — which is itself the honest story of a case this young. Overnight Friday, NBC Los Angeles reported the LAPD’s first count: four people stabbed around 10:15 p.m., two hospitalized in stable condition, two treated and released, one person in custody, and a department statement that officers were “not looking for any other people.” By Saturday evening, ABC7 was reporting the updated figures: at least five victims with severe lacerations, two suspects in custody, and the “mass stabbing” label attached.
What has not moved is the information the department has chosen to release about the people it arrested: nothing. No names. No ages. No charges. The only window into what happened on that bridge is the phrase KTLA attributed to investigators — an “altercation involving numerous individuals” that turned into a blade attack. Forty-plus hours after a mass stabbing two blocks from a major university, that single clause is the entire public account of motive.
One more data point needs careful handling. NBC Los Angeles, citing the LAPD, reported that a deadly stabbing occurred in the same area the prior Sunday — on or about July 5 — and that investigators do not believe the two attacks are related. That earlier killing rests on a single LAPD-via-NBC sourcing chain. But if the department’s own framing is accurate, this corridor produced two knife attacks — one fatal, one mass — in the span of a week, connected by nothing except the block they happened on.
Here is what Los Angeles officials can honestly say, and this page will say it for them: homicide is falling, hard. The LAPD’s own Compstat profile counts 144 homicides year-to-date through late June, down 17.2% from 2025 — a year that itself closed at 230 killings, the city’s lowest total since 1966. Mayor Karen Bass (D) has touted the city’s pace toward its lowest homicide total in nearly 60 years, and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has claimed the same trend statewide, with CalMatters documenting record-low homicide rates across California. Those numbers are real.
They are also not the whole ledger. The same Compstat sheet counts 7,445 aggravated assaults in Los Angeles so far in 2026 — roughly 40 a day, every day. That figure is down 4.7% on the year but up 1.6% over the last four weeks, the stretch that includes Friday’s attack. A mass stabbing with zero fatalities never touches the homicide statistic that anchors the press releases. It lands in the 40-a-day column instead.
And the force absorbing those 40 a day is the smallest Los Angeles has fielded in roughly 30 years. The LAPD’s citywide profile puts the department at 8,569 sworn officers as of June 27 — a floor Police1 projected the city would hit as it loses about 150 officers by mid-2026. Mayor Bass campaigned on growing the department to 9,500 officers. She has since abandoned that goal in unusually plain terms, while the City Council approved $2.7 million to fund 410 recruits against a budget deficit.
“My goal changed, unfortunately. I do hope that one day we get to the expansion, but we are not there now.”
Mayor Karen Bass (D), on abandoning her 9,500-officer LAPD goal, via Police1
As of early April 2026, the LAPD has fallen to roughly 8,677 sworn officers, marking the lowest staffing level in the last 25 years.
Multi-victim knife attacks are not new to this city. In April 2025, a single attacker in Reseda put five stabbing victims in the hospital. In March 2026, a fight inside the downtown restaurant Zaya left at least four people stabbed. And in July 2025 — one year almost to the week before Friday’s attack — an LAPD officer was shot in Exposition Park itself. The two videos below cover the Reseda attack and that officer shooting; both are 2025 context, not footage of Friday’s incident.
If the two people in custody are charged, the case lands with LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman (independent, formerly Republican), who unseated a progressive incumbent in 2024 promising criminals that “the fun is over” and whose office spent its first-year anniversary release cataloguing an enforcement posture it calls restored accountability. The department that has to hold the corridor in the meantime belongs to Chief Jim McDonnell, appointed by Mayor Bass — a chief managing the staffing floor his own Compstat sheet documents.
The elected official whose district covers this corner has a different courtroom on his calendar. Councilman Curren Price (D, CD-9) — whose district includes Exposition Park and whose term ends in December 2026 — has been ordered to stand trial on 12 felony counts: five of embezzlement, four of conflict of interest, and three of perjury, carrying a maximum sentence of 11 years and 4 months, according to the District Attorney’s office. He is presumed innocent on every count, and his case has no connection whatsoever to Friday’s stabbing. But when a corridor produces a mass stabbing during the biggest event month in city history, who answers for the block is a fair civic question — and the answer is a councilman splitting his final year between City Hall and a criminal courtroom.
Karen Bass (D) — Mayor of Los Angeles. Touting record-low homicides; abandoned her 9,500-officer LAPD goal as the force fell to 8,569 sworn.
Gavin Newsom (D) — Governor of California. Claiming the statewide record-low homicide trend the same week this corridor produced its second knife attack in seven days.
Curren Price (D) — City Councilman, District 9, which covers this corridor. Awaiting trial on 12 felony corruption counts in an unrelated case; presumed innocent; termed out December 2026.
Nathan Hochman (independent, formerly Republican) — LA County District Attorney. Would prosecute any charges filed in Friday’s attack.
Jim McDonnell — LAPD Chief, appointed by Mayor Bass; an appointed, non-elected position.
What to watch from here is concrete. Whether the LAPD names and the DA charges the two people in custody — or quietly releases them. Whether the victim count moves a third time. Whether any victims turn out to be USC students, which the university’s public crime log will eventually reflect. And whether the department’s not-believed-related framing of the July 5 killing survives the investigation. This page will be updated as the record firms up; every number above is attributed to the outlet and agency that produced it, because on a story this young, the sourcing is the story.
On the day Los Angeles hosted a World Cup quarterfinal, at least five people were slashed on a Metro pedestrian bridge half a mile from the city’s 2028 Olympic stadium — and two days later the public knows almost nothing: two unnamed people in custody, no charges, one phrase of motive. The homicide record lows Mayor Bass (D) touts are real. So are 40 aggravated assaults a day, a police force at its smallest in roughly 30 years, and a council district whose elected representative — presumed innocent — will spend the Olympics run-up on trial for 12 felonies.
