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Social Worker Stabbed
November 17, 2014 permalink
A New Jersey social worker is on life support after being stabbed 21 times. No names are available.
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Social worker stabbed 21 times in Camden office building
A New Jersey social worker is hospitalized after being stabbed repeatedly inside a state office building.
CAMDEN, N.J. (WPVI) --
A New Jersey social worker is hospitalized after being stabbed repeatedly inside a state office building.
The stabbing occurred around 1:30 p.m. Monday in an office building on the 100 block of Haddon Avenue.
Action News is told the woman, who is an employee with the Department of Children and Families, was stabbed 21 times in the incident.
"She was on top of her just stabbing her and stabbing her," Angel Moore explained.
Moore, of Camden, tells Action News that she was with her caseworker on the fourth floor of the state office building when the attack occurred.
She says it was that much more terrifying to see the attacker was someone she has known since childhood - someone Moore described as a person who has been dealing with mental issues for years.
"I know she's been through some stuff. She takes medication. I just talked to her mom, she has not been taking her medication," Moore said.
Witnesses we spoke with say the attacker simply pulled out a knife and started stabbing the employee repeatedly.
The victim was rushed to Cooper University Hospital for treatment. She underwent surgery and is now on life support.
Larry Randall, the victim's union representative, says this incident could have been avoided if this building was equipped with metal detectors.
Randall says, "It's almost appalling. Because if you think about what our members do ... you need to be protected when you're inside these buildings."
The attacker did run from the building, but police say a suspect has been arrested.
The names of the victim and suspect have not yet been released.
Source: WPVI-TV Philadelphia
The next day the attacker was named as Taisha Edwards. The social worker in critical condition is Leah R Coleman. The attack came two days after police were removed from child welfare offices.
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Camden woman identified as attacker in child welfare worker stabbing
CAMDEN — The woman who brutally attacked a social worker on Monday with a knife — stabbing her more than 20 times, according to reports — has been identified as a city resident.
Taisha Edwards, 30, was charged with criminal attempted murder, aggravated assault, aggravated assault with a knife, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and unlawful possession of a weapon.
She is being held in the Camden County Jail on $500,000 bail. A court date has yet to be set, Andy McNeil, public information officer for the Camden County Prosecutor's Office, said.
Leah R. Coleman, 29, of Camden, who works with the Department of Children and Families, was reportedly stabbed multiple times shortly after 1 p.m. inside the state office building along Haddon Avenue.
Edwards was monitored by Coleman, police and union officials said.
Camden County officials said Coleman was in critical but stable condition as of Tuesday morning. She was transported to Cooper University Hospital in critical condition following the attack.
The attack comes two days after the departments of Children and Families and Human Services reorganized the Human Services police force and pulled all of its officers out of the children welfare offices to save money on overtime, a long-standing problem in the department.
Source: Star-Ledger
New Jersey could respond to the attack by implementing more family-friendly policies, or by stepping up security. They chose the security option.
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Following N.J. caseworker stabbing, Camden building will get armed guards and security officers
TRENTON — Armed guards and security officers with metal detector wands will be stationed inside a Camden office building following the violent attack Monday on a child welfare caseworker by a client she had been supervising, a top union official said today.
After a contentious and emotional morning meeting today between child welfare employees and Department of Children and Families Commissioner Allison Blake, the decision was made later in the day to install security and armed guards at the Haddon Avenue building, said Hetty Rosenstein, state area director for the Communications Workers of America.
Blake’s spokesman Ernest Landante did not return a call or email seeking comment. The department has not made any public statement since the attack.
But child welfare workers in Camden and across the state have asked for far more protection, Rosenstein said. The union filed a grievance Monday night demanding security guards and metal detectors for each of their county and local offices.
They also want the Christie administration to reconstitute the special Human Services Police unit that until Saturday had officers inside many offices, not for security purposes but in order to escort caseworkers to dangerous homes or help locate missing children. The child protection unit was disbanded to alleviate excessive overtime costs, according to the Department of Human Services, which oversees the 92-member police force.
“It should not take someone nearly stabbed to death to get security in every office,” Rosenstein said.
Taisha Edwards, 30 of Camden entered the building Monday at 1:10 p.m.and attacked Leah R. Coleman, 29, a caseworker for the Division of Children Protection and Permanency, with a steak knife, stabbing her multiple times, according to police. A fellow employee pulled Edwards off Coleman, who is in critical but stable condition at Cooper University Hospital, Camden, according to a hospital spokeswoman.
Coleman is “awake and smiling at times. It sounds like she is doing okay,” Rosenstein said. “She is not out of the woods yet.”
Edwards was charged with criminal attempted murder, aggravated assault, aggravated assault with a knife, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and unlawful Possession of a Weapon. She is being held at the Camden County Jail on $500,000 bail, according to a statement from Camden County Prosecutor Mary Eva Colalillo and Camden County Police Chief Scott Thomson this morning.
The attack comes two days after the departments of Children and Families and Human Services reorganized the Human Services police force and disbanded a unit created a decade ago to improve working conditions at what was widely regarded as a mismanaged and under-funded child welfare system. Over the years, however, the overtime became a source of strife for officers not assigned to the child welfare unit, according to current and former state officials and officers. Beginning Saturday, police officers have been stationed at three state psychiatric hospitals spread out across the state and are dispatched wherever they are needed.
Since the assault, a Human Services spokeswoman has denied that Human Services police officers had ever been “stationed” inside the offices or were removed from them last week. But Rosenstein, as well as four other past and present child welfare employees and police officers who spoke to New Jersey Advance Media on condition of anonymity because they are not allowed to speak to the press said officers reported to work at these offices every day.
Child welfare workers are “traumatized” by the attack on their colleague, Rosenstein said. “We’ve got petitions signed by thousands of workers” to bring the officers back, she added.
Source: Star-Ledger
Addendum: Leah R Coleman was released from the hospital on December 1.
