Norina Bentzel tells her story about the machete attack on Red Lion in 2001
Eleven kindergarten students from the Red Lion Area School District, two teachers, and a school principal were attacked with a machete by William Michael Stankewicz in February 2001. Bentzel was the school’s principal at the time of the attack and used herself as a human shield to protect the young children.
Norina Bentzel remembers the machete attack on the Red Lion School in 2001 as if it were yesterday.
And although she is not afraid to talk about the assault, it has taken her years of physical therapy and psychological counseling to finally find some semblance of peace and healing.
However, Bentzel believes it is important to talk openly about it and to talk about her trauma and her healing process in open forums and panel discussions.
“Everyone heals in their own, individual way. And for some reason I was given the gift of being able to talk about it,” Bentzel said in an interview. “I think it’s because I’m an educator and I just feel like I’ve learned so much that could help other people in many ways.”
Eleven kindergarten students from the Red Lion Area School District, two teachers and a school principal were attacked with a machete by William Michael Stankewicz in February 2001. According to a report in the York Dispatch, Stankewicz was a former teacher who drove from his home in Johnson City, Tennessee, to York County on February 2, 2001, and landed in a kindergarten classroom with a 2-foot machete.
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Bentzel was a school principal at the time of the attack and used herself as a human shield to protect the young children in her care.
“They were in my care and I had to protect them,” Bentzel said. “I think that’s just deeply rooted in my personality and in my personality: to protect. So I just had to keep going, I had to stop him. He had to be stopped, so I was just driven.”
Bentzel and teacher Linda Collier were the most seriously injured of those attacked. They both suffered injuries to their arms while attempting to fend off blows with the machete. Stankewicz was charged with two counts of attempted murder in connection with the attacks on Bentzel and Collier.
Some of the children attacked also had to be hospitalized, most with broken bones. Bentzel, Collier and teacher Stacey Bailey were credited with placing themselves between Stankewicz and the children to protect them.
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At the height of the attack, Bentzel recalls jumping on the attacker’s back to force him to drop his machete. The “clank” of metal on the hospital room floor was the most reassuring sound Bentzel heard at that point.
In photos taken after Stankewicz’s arrest, he was covered in blood – it was Bentzel’s blood.
She said she lost 50 percent of her blood that day.
Bentzel underwent four surgeries and 18 months of physical therapy as part of her recovery. Both arms had to be splinted for a time and the attack still leaves permanent scars.
But Bentzel’s trauma goes deeper than her physical wounds. She focused on cognitive healing – on rebuilding trust and regaining a sense of safety in the world around her.
“I lost trust in people and I lost the feeling of safety and security. I lost trust in men,” Bentzel said. “I had to rebuild all of those things. Everyone who goes through trauma loses something. It doesn’t have to be physical, it can be emotional, cognitive or spiritual.”
For her, music was an essential part of healing.
“I learned that songs and their messages meant so much more to me than spoken words,” Bentzel said. “And so I started listening to music, and I listened to songs over and over again.”
In her recently published memoir, Bentzel describes her healing process and recounts the events of 2001 from her perspective. Her book, “Glorious Sadness: Faith~Love~Hope Trumps School Attack,” is available on Amazon.
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While researching her memoirs, Bentzel wanted to speak to the now-grown kindergarten children who were present at the school during the machete attack.
One of their biggest questions was whether the children remembered what had happened.
“And I’m telling you, 100% of them remembered it like it was yesterday,” Bentzel said of the 12 students she interviewed. “I wasn’t sure they would remember it because they were so young. But it affected their lives in so many ways that they couldn’t possibly have forgotten it.”
Last year, Stankewicz, 78, was found unconscious in his cell at the State Correctional Institution in Dallas, said SCI Superintendent Kevin Ransom.
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Stankewicz was serving a 132- to 264-year prison sentence for attempted murder and other charges related to the February 2001 attack on kindergarten teachers and school staff at North Hopewell-Winterstown Elementary School. He had been incarcerated at SCI Dallas since 2012.
Stankewicz’s sentence was one of the longest in York County history.
On Thursday, in a crowded room with members of the York County community, Bentzel recalled the attack on Stankewicz – she was wheeled out on a stretcher that day.
Despite all the chaos and turmoil, she felt a sense of peace.
She told herself, “It’s okay. We’re going to get through this and we’re going to do this together.”
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