A three-year-old girl who was injured in a mass stabbing at her birthday party has died of her injuries.
Ruya Kadir was rushed to hospital in Utah by air ambulance following the rampage, but died yesterday.
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The victims, six of whom were children, had come to the US from Syria, Iraq and Ethiopia, Time magazine reports. Kadir and her mother arrived in the US from Ethiopia in December 2015.
The alleged knifeman, Timothy Kinner, is a US national. However, Boise police chief William Bones said there is currently no evidence that the attack was racially or religiously motivated.
Kinner, who has a lengthy criminal record in several states, had been staying in the building as a guest of a resident, but on Friday was asked to leave.
“Investigators say Kinner returned to the apartment complex seeking revenge for being kicked out,” the Idaho Statesman newspaper reports.
The 30-year-old is accused of “plunging a large folding knife into Ruya’s body during a bloody, unexplained rampage”, KTVB reports. One of the adult victims was reportedly stabbed 15 times after trying to intervene.
Police chief Bones said the frenzied attack on small children celebrating a birthday was “untenable, unconscionable and is pure evil in my mind”.
One of the injured children has now been sent home, but the other victims remain in hospital, some of them in critical condition.
Kinner appeared in court on Monday on one charge of first-degree murder and eight of aggravated battery. He showed “little reaction” to proceedings, says KTVB, and expressed confusion about the charges against him.
Country magistrate Russell Comstock “told Kinner he was ‘an extreme danger to the community’ and ordered him held without bond,” Time reports.