“Hey, there’s someone walking around with two blades attacking people,” a student at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada reportedly warned via text Wednesday afternoon.

The person was studying with a group of students at Hagey Hall when they received this terrifying notification and explained that they had decided to barricade the door to their study hall.

Maybe, CTV News reportedhe waited in his study hall until the student saw officers from the Waterloo Regional Police Service (WRPS) arresting a person, allegedly responsible for stabbing three people during a study class on gender in the early afternoon.

Here’s everything we know about the incident, which WRPS Superintendent Shaena Morris says is still under investigation:

The reason remains unclear

At a news conference on Wednesday, Morris said officers responded to a stabbing incident at the University of Waterloo at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday. She said the attack took place in a classroom inside Hagey Hall.

Speaking alongside him, the university’s associate vice president for communications, Nick Manning, told reporters that a second “Phil 202” philosophy conference was underway at the time. According to the university’s website, Phil 202 is a course on gender issues for sophomores in college.

Both Ms. Morris and Mr. Manning confirmed that the suspect in the attack was a member of the University of Waterloo community, without specifying how the suspect was connected to the institution.

According University of Waterloo Student Newspaperan eyewitness who was present at the class, student Jinming Li said the assailant appeared to be between 20 and 30 years old.

“I cannot speak to the reason at this time. We are obviously under investigation right now, but we have investigators with our arrestee determining that at this time,” Morris said.

Three people – including two students and the teacher – were injured in the stabbing attack. They were transported to the hospital, without risk of death.

She added that no charges had yet been filed and declined to comment on the evidence in the ongoing investigation.

How the attack happened

According to Li, the assailant entered the first floor room of Hagey Hall and asked the teacher – who has not been identified – what it was about. He then slammed the door, pulled two knives from his backpack and attacked the teacher, as around 40 students fought their way out of the single-entry classroom.

Another student who was in the class at the time of the attack, Yusuf Kaymak, told CTV News: “I ran away and after we left a boy was stabbed. he was bleeding [from] his arm. I don’t know what happened to the teacher.

An hour and a half after police arrived at the scene, the university announced that “there were no further threats to the campus community” on Twitter. Hagey Hall was vacated and closed for the rest of the day, reopening for classes at 7 a.m. Thursday.

Manning told reporters at the press conference that the university’s priority — beyond supporting the ongoing police investigation — was to support the mental health of students and staff.

Mental health counselors were reportedly on hand at Hagey Hall and other areas of campus to help those affected by the attack.

“Our whole community is really worried about this happening here. It’s a big shock,” Manning told reporters.

Failures of emergency alerts

The university’s WatSAFE emergency notification system was tested on Wednesday, before the attack took place. According to the student newspaper, one of the purposes of WatSafe is to alert members of the community to emergencies on campus. However, several people complained that they did not receive extremely late notification of the security breach.

A member of the team, James M Skidmore, shared a screenshot of a WatSAFE notification on Twitter and captioned it: “First alert from WatSAFE app regarding the stabbing incident University of Waterloo #uwaterloo – about 90 minutes after seeing SWAT police led by me on campus.

“Emergency communication @UWaterloo following this terrible knife attack, it was a disaster. We haven’t received any messages about the ‘WatSAFE app’ – which was apparently tested *earlier in the day* before the attack,” tweeted another teacher, Emmett Macfarlane.

He also called out the university’s lack of coordinated communication after the attack, reporting that several graduate students said they “never received *any* notification that there was an attack on campus.”

“If they weren’t on Twitter they still wouldn’t know something happened,” Macfarlane wrote.

Asked about the shortcomings of the emergency notification system, Manning told reporters, “Of course we need to review our emergency notification systems.

“In any incident, the first thought of everyone involved is the immediate preservation of life and response to safety, which was the focus today.”

“Everything looks very dangerous”

Although police have not commented on the attacker’s motive, academics and faculty at the University of Waterloo have expressed concern that the gender course has been targeted.

The Arcadia University politics professor tweeted: ‘Earlier today a man stormed into a classroom at the University of Waterloo and demanded to know what the course was about. He then pulled two knives from his jacket and stabbed the teacher. The course was Philosophy of Gender.

Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo, Aimée Morrison tweeted that while it is true that the course was chosen because of its subject, “So this is an ideologically motivated hate crime.. And it should be treated as such.