A knife-wielding man stabbed four people at a college in downtown Columbus, Ohio, on Wednesday, critically wounding three of them before a police officer shot and wounded the attacker, a police spokesman said.

Columbus police spokesman Sergeant Rich Weiner told reporters three knives were found at the scene of the attacks, one inside the building and two outside. His remarks were broadcast on the website of Columbus television station WBNS.

Officials at the Columbus Zoo are taking issue with an exemption in an Ohio bill that would allow a school to display a dangerous wild animal as a sports mascot. The exemption is part of a proposal introduced on Thursday to regulate exotic animals in the state.

The zoo’s chief operating officer says the facility supports the legislation overall, but not the exemption. Tom Stalf also praised the bill’s perimeter fencing requirements. He says the rule could have helped keep dozens of animals in Zanesville contained after their suicidal owner freed them from their cages in October.

The historic Indianola Middle school sits empty now ,but it was scheduled to be renovated into a building the district could use. Anthony Udeagbala was the architect hired to renovate Indianola the school into a Spanish and French immersion school for the Columbus city school district.

He was fired from the project last night at the board meeting.

Columbus police say murder suspect Leo DeAndre Scott took his own life this morning after police tried to take him into custody at the Lemon Tree apartments at 54th Street and Thomason Avenue. Police have been searching for weeks for Scott, 25, who is wanted in connection with the January fatal shooting in Port Royal, S.C., of Columbus native Velencia Compton. Authorities said he killed the woman and fled South Carolina with their 3-year-old son Jayden.

Police went to the apartment, knocked and were able to get two women out of the apartment. One of the women identified Scott from a photograph.

As a young state senator 30 years ago, Paul Pfeifer helped write Ohio’s death penalty law. Today, as the senior member of the state Supreme Court, he’s trying to eliminate it.

It’s not uncommon for sitting judges to change their mind on the death penalty — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun famously said in 1994 he would no longer “tinker with the machinery of death” — but Pfeifer may be the only one to argue so ardently against a capital punishment law he himself created, and yet continue to rule on death penalty cases.

Celebrity zookeeper Jack Hanna criticized Ohio lawmakers Thursday for not yet passing a bill to regulate exotic animals, months after authorities shot dozens of lions, tigers, bears and other wild creatures let loose by their suicidal owner.

A Republican state senator from Zanesville, the eastern Ohio city where the animals were shot, had planned to introduce a bill this week but then said it was not ready. There is no new timetable for the measure.