By Daniel Arkin, Staff Writer, NBC News

Parishioners at an Albuquerque, N.M., church where a young man went on a stabbing spree during closing hymns Sunday morning have described to reporters and police a chaotic and disturbing scene.

Witnesses told authorities that the assailant, identified by police as 24-year-old Lawrence Capener, leaped over pews and lunged at members of the choir with a sharp object at the end of morning mass at St. Jude Thaddeus Catholic Church.

Capener stabbed people at the altar repeatedly, sending four churchgoers to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries, according to authorities.