Four students injured in baseball bat attack on Australian National University campus in Canberra

A student was detained by police after assaulting his teacher and three of his fellow students with a baseball bat on Friday in a classroom at the Australian National University, police said.

Soon after 9am, the student stood up from his seat with a bat and approached the teacher at the front of the classroom, the Australian Capital Police said. Other students in the class intervened and tried to restrain the attacker, but he assaulted four people, including the teacher. Police were called to the school and took the assailant into custody, Police Detective Superintendent Ben Cartwright said.

During the assault, one student managed to take the bat away from the attacker and run away with it, Cartwright told reporters.

The attacker, an 18-year-old man, had no other weapons on him, Cartwright said. He was not on the radar of police or intelligence agencies, and his motivation is unknown.

The four people who were wounded were taken to a hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries, Cartwright said.

Max Claessens, an 18-year-old student whose friend was inside the classroom, said his friend told him that the attacker waited until the class had settled in before he suddenly pulled a cricket or baseball bat out of his bag and began hitting people. The attacker had been a student of the statistics class for four weeks, Claessens said.