February 2, 2001, is a day many won’t forget in York County. Norinia Bentzel was the Principal of the North Hopewell-Winterstown Elementary School when she was attacked twice by a man with a machete.

Bentzel noticed someone unfamiliar trying to get in the school around 11:23 a.m. The intruder, William Stankewicz snuck in behind a parent dropping her child off for school.

“To me, he just looked like a grandfather coming in. So that's kind of how I got started. In the event I, I did go looking for him then just to see if I can help him. And I looked in the lobby when I went out there heading toward the cafeteria. I couldn't see him anywhere. I took a few more steps. I thought, well, he must know where he's going. Took a few more steps and again there was some voice that came into my head, and I said, stop, turn around. And so, I did. I didn't know what was going on as far as those messages were in my brain. But I stopped, turned around, and he was standing outside of our kindergarten classroom just beyond the office area where I had come out.”

When Bentzel found Stankewicz, he looked at her and then pulled out the machete. She yelled for the staff to call 911 as he was pushing her down the hallways.

“He came in on me for the second time and started attacking me again. And every time he was attacking me, it was basically he was aiming for my head. So, my hands were criss crossed above my head to protect my head because I didn't have anything else to protect me.”

11 students and two other adults were hurt in the machete attack.

“I went through six hours of surgery, two teams of doctors, one on each hand and left arm. I was there for five days, and in those five days, I was very upset, and I cried a lot. Most people thought I was upset about my injuries, and that was not the case. Or possibly just because of the event. And I knew what happened and how horrific it was. And that wasn't the case either. I cried because I didn't think I could ever go back to my school. I thought that it was too painful to ever go back as the principal there.”

Nearly 20 years later, Bentzel has written a memoir, “Glorious Sadness – Faith – Love – Hope – Trumps School Attack”.

“My basic reason for writing this was that I had learned so much in these 23 years, since 2001, when this happened, 23 years has gone by and I have learned so much about healing and trauma, perspective, loss, tragedy, crisis. I'm an educator, so I determined that it was necessary for me to write down what I knew in hopes of benefiting others. Because as we grow in our world, it doesn't seem to be getting any better. School attacks continue to happen and very innocent people continue to be killed or hurt. And somehow, someway, I'm hoping that we can stop some of this anyway, get to a better place.”

 

 

 

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