Jane Margaret Dow helped to save an indeterminate number of persons from assault, Alexandria, Virginia, January 9, 2005. Dow, 59, editor, was visiting in a room on the nursing floor of a retirement home when screaming in the corridor alerted her to a disturbed man, armed with a knife, who had entered the floor. The man had just attacked four people with the knife in another wing on the floor. He entered a room at the end of the corridor and inflicted extensive knife wounds on an elderly patient, then he entered an adjoining room and attacked another elderly patient. Dow approached in the corridor with a canister of pepper spray, joining a home health aide who had responded from another patient room. Although the assailant threatened them, striking Dow and knocking her to the floor, Dow and the aide used the spray against the assailant, after which the aide took the knife from him. Dow attended the injured patients while the aide helped to detain the assailant until police arrived and arrested him.
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