Motive unclear in US stabbing
No proof yet that birthday party attack was hate crime, say police Remains of Chinese workers to be reburied in US
BOISE: Several families who had fled danger and violence overseas were enjoying a threeyearold’s birthday party in Boise, Idaho, when the unthinkable happened: A man ran up and began chasing and stabbing the children, turning his knife on the adults who tried to intervene.
The attack occurred on Saturday night at a lowincome apartment complex that is also home to refugee families from around the world.
Nine people were injured, including the birthday girl and five other children aged between four and 12.
The most gravely injured were clinging to life on Sunday, Boise Police Chief William Bones said.
“The victims are some of the newest members of our community. This was an attack against those who are most vulnerable,” he said.
The chaos began shortly before 8.46pm on Saturday, when police received a report of a man with a knife. They arrived less than four minutes later to find victims lying in the street, parking lot and complex.
Timmy Kinner, 30, was found and arrested a short distance away.
Investigators later found a knife believed to be used in the attack in a nearby canal.
Members of refugee families from Syria, Iraq and Ethiopia were among the injured.
Kinner, who is not a refugee, had been asked to leave the apartment complex on Friday after staying there for a short time with a resident, Bones said.
Kinner faces several felony charges, including aggravated battery and injury to a child.
“We have no specific evidence at this time to believe it was a hate crime,” Bones told reporters at a press conference on Sunday, saying the victims may have simply been targeted because of where they were located on the property.
Still, he said, the motive remained under investigation.
The attack resulted in the most victims in a single incident in Boise Police Department history.
“The crime scene, the faces of the parents struggling, the tears on their faces and the faces of the children in their hospital beds will be something I will carry with me for the rest of my life, as will every first responder that night,” Bones said.
Police believe Kinner had only been in Boise for a short time when he met a resident of the complex, who offered him a temporary place to stay. She asked him to leave on Friday because of his behaviour.
“I believe her perception was, ‘Here’s a helping hand I can give in return for a helping hand I have
been given,”’ Bones said.
The woman was not among the victims.
Residents of the apartments and the rest of the community were “reeling” from the violence, Bones said, and the victims would need longterm community support.
For some of the refugees living at the complex, the attack revived traumatic memories of the war and violence they had fled.
The blood from the stabbings reminded resident Thado Aip of the terror she had left in Somalia, an interpreter said on Sunday. — AP CARLIN: The remains of 13 Chinese men unearthed in northeast Nevada more than two decades ago will finally be reburied in the Carlin City Cemetery.
The remains will be honoured with a traditional Chinese ceremony today, the Elko Daily Free Press reported.
The remains had been sent for archaeological study in 1996.
“They will be laid to rest back where they should have been,” said Margaret Johnston, a Carlin City Council member.
Thousands of Chinese immigrants arrived in the western United States to work in mines after the California Gold Rush in 1848. Later, many were hired to build the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1880s.
A Carlin property owner discovered the remains after doing some digging in November 1996.
The caskets were exhumed from the forgotten Chinese cemetery by archaeologists from the Nevada State Museum, the US Forest Service and the Elko County Chapter of the Nevada Archaeological Association.
The finding gained attention as there have been only a few professional archaeological excavations of Chinese cemeteries in the country, said Tim Murphy, a retired archaeologist living in Elko.