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Alex Alvarez said the whole event felt like a blur. On Dec. 4, the social worker was doing his typical rounds at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital when he heard a commotion and saw the back of a man who appeared to be attacking his friend.
Alvarez, who also goes by Alejandro, didn’t yet know the hooded attacker was a patient, the same one his colleagues had voiced safety concerns about multiple times after facing threats of violence. He didn’t yet know that the patient, who suffered from severe mental illness, was armed with a knife. He just knew he had to act quickly.
“I just bolt out, and I pull the guy off of him because I noticed no one is doing anything. But that’s likely because everyone saw what was already unfolding, and I didn’t from my vantage point, holding him from the back of his shirt,” Alvarez recalled recently. “And there I am in the hallway, he’s holding him and then he drops him. Nothing was catching up to me when I saw what was actually happening. I just kind of was in shock. And it was at that moment that I realized, oh shoot, he wasn’t punching him, he was actually stabbing him.”…