A local court issued a warrant Saturday to arrest the suspect in a stabbing rampage earlier this week that wounded 14 people in Bundang, south of Seoul.

The Suwon District Court granted the warrant to formally arrest the 22-year-old, surnamed Choi, on charges of attempted murder, citing the risk of flight.

Choi rammed a vehicle into a pedestrian walkway outside a department store on Thursday and randomly attacked shoppers with a knife inside the mall.

The attack left 14 people injured, 12 of them seriously. Of the total, nine were wounded in the stabbing attack and five in the car crash.

Police said he had dropped out of high school due to social phobia and was later diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder.

The suspect was quoted as telling police that he visited the department store and the nearby Seohyeon subway station one day before his crime with two knives he bought at a discount store.

The stabbing rampage came less than two weeks after a 33-year-old man named Cho Seon fatally stabbed a complete stranger in his 20s near Seoul's Sillim Station and then attacked three other men in a nearby alleyway.

Source: Yonhap News Agency