At approximately 9:30a.m. (UTC+09:00) on 5 June 1931, Graciano Bilas, a 42-year-old Filipino steerage passenger, began stabbing people randomly with a pocketknife aboard the Empress of Canada.[1][2][3] Bilas, a plantation laborer in Hawaii, had boarded the ship on 29 May to sail to the Philippines.[3] At the time of the attack, the Empress of Canada was en route from Honolulu to Yokohama and was located at 34°31′N145°31′E / 34.51°N 145.51°E / 34.51; 145.51.[2] After engaging in a friendly conversation with a Canadian crew member, Bilas stabbed him and two others who happened to be nearby.[1] The assailant continued to attack crew members and passengers, stabbing several from behind in the steerage and alleyways.[1][3] Crew members searched for half an hour for Bilas before finding him in the ship's bow.[1][3] He was restrained and arrested, with accounts differing as to whether he surrendered or was forcibly taken into custody.[1] Bilas was kept in the brig under armed guard as the ship sailed to Hong Kong, where he was charged with murder.[1][2]
Two Chinese crew members, chief engineer Chan Yue and cabin boy Chan Ching (or Chang Ching), were killed.[1][2][3] Twenty-nine others were wounded.[1] As of the day after the attack, eight Japanese and nine Chinese victims were in critical condition, while two Chinese victims were feared to have been fatally wounded.[1] At least four crew members and eleven passengers were stabbed.[4]
In late June 1931, Bilas' trial began in Hong Kong.[2][4] Despite the high number of casualties, he was only charged with the killing of Chan Yue.[2] The knife used in the attack and a statement made by Bilas were presented as evidence.[2] In the statement, Bilas said that he targeted Japanese passengers because he suspected that they were planning to throw him overboard.[2] The Empress of Canada's surgeon testified that he believed Bilas suffered from manic depressive psychosis, stating that Bilas was incoherent after the attack, refused food and drink, and would stand for hours in one position.[2] In July, Bilas was found insane and committed to a psychiatric hospital.[5]
1950s
Nainital, India (1950)
The Nainital wedding massacre was a mass murder that occurred during a wedding in Nainital, India on 21 April 1950, when a drunk Gurkha soldier stabbed 22 guests at a wedding, all of them apparently fatally. The man, who was armed with a machete, was enraged by a low caste money lender marrying a girl of the higher social standing Brahmin caste, and stabbed the Harijan members. All of his victims were members of the Harijan caste.[6][7][8][9]
On 21 August 1952, Tore Hedin began killing after his ex-girlfriend, Ulla Östberg, did not return to him. He first killed his parents and set their house aflame.[10] He then went to Östberg's workplace, a retirement home, and he killed her and the matron with an axe. He set the retirement home on fire as well, killing five of its residents. Hedin had previously killed a friend of his in 1951, similarly burning the home to erase evidence.[11]
In 1954, Ugandan police constable William Unek used an axe to kill 21 people in one and a half hours near Mahagi, Belgian Congo.[12][13][14] Three years later, Unek went on another rampage near Mwanza, Tanganyika, killing 36 people using an axe, a knife, a rifle, as well as burning and strangulation.[15][16][17] He was killed after attempting to evade police during a manhunt.[16][18][19]
On 20 August Jorge Valenzuela Torres murdered a mother and five of her children with a scythe before fleeing. He was arrested the following month and executed in 1963.
Richard Speck killed eight student nurses on the night of 13–14 July 1966, holding them captive and stabbing or strangling each of them throughout the night.[20][21] A ninth student nurse escaped by hiding under a bed.[22] Speck was identified after a suicide attempt, when he was taken to the hospital and a resident physician recognized Speck's tattoo from a description in the news.[23]
The Anne Anne Kindergarten stabbing was a mass stabbing which occurred in Kowloon, Hong Kong on 3 June 1982. After killing his mother and sister in their flat in Un Chau Street Estate, and also wounding two other women, 28-year-old Lee Chi-hang (李志衡; Lǐ Zhìhéng; lei5 zi3 hang4) entered Anne Anne Kindergarten and stabbed 34 children, killing four of them, and also injured several bystanders, before he was arrested by police. Lee, previously diagnosed with schizophrenia, was found to be insane and was placed in a mental institution.[24]
After the stabbing, security measures at nursery schools were upgraded, and it was made compulsory for discharged patients of mental institutions to regularly attend psychiatric out-patient clinics.[25]
The Banjarsari massacre occurred on 15 April 1987, when a 42-year-old farmer named Wirjo killed 20 people and wounded 12 others in the village of Banjarsari in Banyuwangi Regency, Indonesia.[26]
The massacre began at Wirjo's home, where he attacked his adoptive son Renny and his friend Arbaiyah, both 4 years old, with a parang and a sickle. While Renny managed to escape, Arbaiyah was hit in the neck and died. Wirjo then entered the home of Maskur, a neighbour, where he first killed Mrs Maskur with the sickle, before turning on her 80-year-old husband, who tried to help her. Afterwards he made his way through the village, assaulting people at random. Then the people from the village tried to find Wirjo but failed, only to be met by many dead bodies spread across a field.
By the end of the day Wirjo had hacked a total of 32 people, most of them farmers on the way to their fields and students going to school. 18 of his victims died at the scene, while two others later succumbed to their wounds in hospital. As the culprit was nowhere to be found authorities temporarily suspended classes at local schools, while people locked themselves in their homes.
After an extensive manhunt, including police, dogs, and the army, Wirjo was found the next day just 5 kilometres (3 miles) west of his house, dangling from the roots of a tree growing over a riverbank. He had committed suicide by hanging himself with his belt.[27][28][29]
On 8 March 1989, Paulino Fernández stabbed seven people to death and injured at least six others in Chantada, Spain, before killing himself.[30][31][32][33]
Nafang, China (1989)
On the afternoon of 19 March 1989, Huang Guozhen became intoxicated, set fire to his house and drove to his brother's house, killing his brother and his wife with a firewood knife. Guozhen then proceeded to travel to the local market and began to kill individuals at random, including children and the elderly. In total, he killed 16–17 people and injured two others. Sometime before the rampage killing, Huang became embroiled in a dispute with his brother, Huang Xiangbang.
Guozhen was eventually subdued by bystanders Huang Guoqin and local CCP party secretary Zhou Youbang. Guozhen was arrested and tried ten days later in Qinzhou. He was sentenced to death in front of a crowd of 10,000 people and was quickly executed on the same day.[34]
1990s
Auckland, New Zealand (1990)
On 16 July 1990, a mentally ill woman attacked the courtyard of the Jewish Kadimah College's primary school in Central Auckland, stabbing four children with a knife while screaming antisemitic slogans. The attack continued as other young students looked on "in horror", while members of staff ran to help the children. The woman, 52-year-old Pauline Janet Williamson, was eventually disarmed by a male teacher, Mr Yurovitch. The children, aged 6 to 8, were hospitalised immediately afterwards; all survived, after receiving intensive surgery. They were identified by police as 6-year-old twins Nicholas and Samuel Henderson; Simon Clark, 6, and Damon Bree, 8.
This apparently random act of antisemitic violence in New Zealand, a country known to be tolerant of its Jewish community, shocked many. However, it followed the desecration of several Jewish graves in Dunedin by two months, which itself was a copycat of an attack on Jewish graves in Carpentras, in the South of France.[35]
As the pupils played in the school courtyard before school was due to start on Monday, 16 July 1990, mental health outpatient Pauline Janet Williamson ran onto the school courtyard, where 6 year olds Nicholas and Sam Henderson and Simon Clark, and 8-year-old Damon Bree were playing. She then produced a 4-inch, stay-sharp vegetable knife and began screaming antisemitic slogans and a Jewish surname (not one shared by any of the victims), before wildly lacerating these four children.[36]
The Rackhams' stabbing incident refers to a mass stabbing incident in 1994 where 30-year-old David Cedric Morgan stabbed or slashed 15 people in a Rackhams department store in Birmingham, England. Morgan, previously diagnosed with schizophrenia, hypomania and depressive psychosis, had previously complained of "evil thoughts" about attacking women and arrested before for attacking women in the street, each resulting in conditional discharges.[37] Three people were seriously injured and needed surgeries. In addition of those stabbed, five people were treated for shock.[38][39] Morgan was arrested by police after being confronted by an armed civilian.[37][40]
Morgan was later determined by a psychologist to be "vulnerable and isolated", but that he apparently suffered from no mental illnesses. Morgan was sentenced to life imprisonment in February 1996.[40][37] In 2002, he was transferred from the Broadmoor Hospital to a medium security unit where he would be allowed on escorted shopping trips as part of rehabilitation.[40] In 2006, Morgan, then 43 years old, was released into the community to go shopping. At the time he was being treated at the Stafford's St George's Hospital.[41]
Naples, Florida, US (1995)
In the early hours of 15 November 1995, 26-year old Brandy Bain Jennings and 19-year old Charles Jason Graves killed three former co-workers at a Cracker Barrel in Naples, Florida. Jennings & Graves robbed the restaurant and slit the throats of 18-year old Jason Wiggins, 38-year old Dorothy Siddle, and 27-year old Vicki Smith. Both suspects were caught a year later in Las Vegas and were sentenced to death.[42]
Chenggu County, China (1998)
The Chenggu axe massacre was a mass murder that occurred in Chenggu County, Hanzhong, Shaanxi, China on 23 June 1998, when Yang Mingxin, a 39-year-old local farmer, killed nine people, and wounded three others with an axe.
Yang, who was described as reticent, had refused to sell ten stolen geese for another farmer named Guo Baoning, and when the owner of the geese later caught him, Guo suspected Yang had informed on him. After a heated argument between the two, during which Guo threatened to kill Yang's family, Yang armed himself with an axe and hacked twelve villagers between 4 months and 71 years of age. Unable to locate Guo he eventually tried to commit suicide by drinking insecticide and hanging himself, but was rescued and taken to a hospital.[43][44][45]
Krông Pắk District, Vietnam (1998)
Dương Văn Môn, a member of the Nùng minority, was a poor rice farmer, and was said to have once had an unspecified mental illness.[46] When his mother died he reportedly dug a grave on village property, but was then denied to use it, and therefore had to bury her in his own garden.[47] He also got severely into debt to finance the traditional funeral feast.[48]
On the third day of the festivities, when his guests began to complain that there was not enough to drink and eat, the 35-year-old armed himself with two machete-like knives and began to attack his relatives and neighbours. He first stabbed an elderly woman preparing food in his house, as well as a child, and eventually began chasing people throughout the village, killing a total of eleven people, among them seven children, and leaving six others injured, including his wife. One of the wounded died in hospital, according to early reports. Afterwards he tried to commit suicide by swallowing insecticide, but was forced to vomit it when he was captured by villagers 4+1⁄2 hours later. He was then arrested by police and brought to a hospital.[49][50][51][52] Môn was sentenced to death for the murder of eleven people in November 1998.[53]
On 29 September 1999. Yasuaki Uwabe, a 35-year-old former architect, drove a car into Shimonoseki Station and then stabbed passers-by at random, killing five people and injuring 10 others, before being arrested at the scene. Uwabe was sentenced to death in 2002 and executed in 2012.[54]
On 8 June 2001, ex-convict Mamoru Takuma began stabbing students and teachers with a kitchen knife at Ikeda Elementary School in Ikeda, Japan. He killed eight students and injured thirteen students and two teachers.[55]
While attempting to escape from police officers in Manchester, Kamel Bourgass used a kitchen knife to stab four police officers, killing anti-terrorism detective Stephen Oake.
Midlothian, Illinois, US
On 4 June 2004, 26-year-old Brett Carlson stabbed six people at a strip mall in Midlothian, killing 1-year-old Ashley Hurt. In 2007, Carlson was sentenced to 50 years in prison.[56][57][58]
Ruzhou, China
On 26 November 2004, Yan Yanming (Chinese: 闫彦明; 1983 – January 18, 2005) entered a dormitory at the Ruzhou Number Two High School in Ruzhou, China on November 26, 2004, with a knife and attacked twelve boys, killing nine of them.[59][60] After the attack, Yanming ran away from the school, but was arrested hours later after he survived a suicide attempt because his mother had reported his location to the Ruzhou police.[citation needed] After trial, Yanming was sentenced to death and executed on January 18, 2005, in Pingdingshan.[61]
New York City, New York, US
Between June 13 and June 14, 20-year-old Kenny Alexis randomly stabs four people within a 13-hour time span in Manhattan. In 2009, Alexis was sentenced to 34 years in prison.[62][63]
On 24 September 2006, Shi Yuejun killed several people who he believed had wronged him.[citation needed] He continued killing through September 29 before he was caught in a 14,000-person manhunt.[64][65][66] He killed a total of twelve people and injured five more.
Tsuchiura, Japan
Masahiro Kanagawa's police mug shot
On 23 March 2008, Masahiro Kanagawa (金川 真大, Kanagawa Masahiro; October 13, 1983 – February 21, 2013) went on a stabbing spree in the city of Tsuchiura, which left a 27-year-old man dead and seven others wounded. Police arrested Kanagawa, then 24, who was wanted in an earlier slaying of a 72-year-old man. The man told the investigators that he "just wanted to kill anyone".[67] The suspect, who carried two knives, stabbed the 27-year-old man to death and hurt at least seven others, while the victims were walking along a short hallway connecting Arakawaoki Station.[68] The 27-year-old died as he was being rushed to a nearby hospital.[69] Police said that Kanagawa liked games and that he hid out in Akihabara while escaping.[70] Some media outlets claimed that he murdered people under the influence of Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword.[71] He reportedly sought capital punishment.[68] Tomohiro Katō, who committed the Akihabara massacre, is alleged to have posted a message which referred to his case.[72] The Mito District Court sentenced him to death on December 18, 2009,[73] and he was executed by hanging on February 21, 2013.[74]
On 8 June 2008, Tomohiro Katō drove a rented truck into a crowd and then jumped out with a dagger. He stabbed at least twelve people before he was pursued and captured by police.[75][76][77][78] Four people died of stab wounds, and three died from the truck attack.[79]
Osaka, Japan
On 23 June 2008, a middle-aged woman stabbed two university students and a company executive in the arm at Ōsaka Station, leaving them only with light injuries.[80]
Three people were stabbed in Beijing, China, on 9 August 2008, by 47-year-old Tang Yongming, during a guided tour of the 13th-century Drum Tower in Beijing during the 2008 Summer Olympics.[81] The attacker then leapt to his death from a 40-metre (130ft) high balcony on the Drum Tower.[82]
The victims were an American couple from Lakeville, Minnesota, Todd and Barbara Bachman, and their female Chinese tour guide.[83] Todd Bachman, who died in the attack, was the father of American athlete Elisabeth Bachman and the father-in-law of Team USA men's volleyball coach Hugh McCutcheon, whose team went on to win gold at the Olympic tournament.[84] Barbara Bachman was severely wounded but survived the attack.[85] She and the tour guide were listed in stable condition at a local hospital.[86] Elisabeth Bachman was also on the tour but was uninjured.[87]
Tang Yongming spent most of his life in the outskirts of Hangzhou, and was a metal presser at the Hangzhou Meter Factory for more than twenty years. He had no previous criminal record, according to investigators.[88][89] Investigators reported that Tang was distraught over family problems.[90] A colleague who knew Tang said that he had "an unyielding mouth", "grumbled a great deal", and was "very cynical".[89] Tang had recently lost his job, with a former co-worker saying that Tang "had a quick temper and was always complaining about society".[89] Police reported that Tang went through his second divorce in 2006 and grew increasingly despondent when his 21-year-old son started getting into trouble. The son was detained in May 2007 on suspicion of fraud, then received a suspended prison sentence in March 2008 for theft.[90]
Shortly after the attacks, the tower was closed to tourists with the surrounding area still open to tourists. Chinese officials strengthened their security measures to alleviate safety concerns. At the time, there were 110,000 officers were stationed in Beijing.[91] There were also 1.7 million volunteers in the city, including 1 million "social volunteers" who "[kept] an eye out for troublemakers".[92] Beijing Olympic official Wang Wei announced that there would be extra security checks implemented at some scenic areas, and large outdoor screens used to view the games around Beijing were muted or turned off to avoid large crowds.[91]
The Nonhyeon-dong massacre was a mass murder that occurred in the Gangnam-gu ward of Seoul, South Korea on 20 October 2008, when 30-year-old Jeong Sang-jin (Korean:정상진) set fire in a goshiwon and slashed thirteen women with a sashimi knife. A total of six people died in the incident and seven more were injured.[93][94] Jeong was sentenced to death on May 12, 2009.[95]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
