A series of uncoordinated mass stabbings, hammer attacks, and cleaver attacks in the People's Republic of China began in March 2010. The spate of attacks left at least 90 dead and some 473 injured. As most cases had no known motive, analysts have blamed mental health problems caused by rapid social change for the rise in these kinds of mass murder and murder-suicide incidents.
On 14 December 2012 between 7 and 8 a.m. local time, a 36-year-old villager identified as Min Yongjun stabbed 24 people, including 23 children and an elderly woman, in a knife attack at Chenpeng Village Primary School, Wenshu Township, Guangshan County, Henan province, China. The children targeted by the knifeman are thought likely to be between six and eleven years of age. The attack occurred as the children were arriving for classes probably at 8:00 or maybe even 9:00.
On September 4, 2013, one student was killed and three others were wounded in a stabbing attack at Spring High School in Spring, Texas, United States. A 17-year-old student, identified as Luis Alonzo Alfaro, was arrested and charged for the murder. In September 2014, Alfaro was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The Franklin Regional High School stabbing was a mass stabbing that occurred on April 9, 2014, at Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville, Pennsylvania. Alexander Hribal, a 16-year-old sophomore at the school, used a pair of eight-inch kitchen knives to stab and slash 20 students and a security guard. Four students sustained life-threatening injuries, but all survived.
The 2016 Munich knife attack took place on 10 May 2016 when a 27-year-old mentally disturbed man stabbed four men, one of them fatally at Grafing station in the Upper Bavarian town of Grafing, some 32 kilometres (20 mi) from Munich, southern Germany. As the knifer reportedly shouted "Allahu Akbar" while stabbing the random victims, first reactions of the German and international media as well as the general public suspected an Islamist attack. On his arrest shortly after the attack, the perpetrator proved to be a mentally disturbed, unemployed carpenter with drug problems and no known ties to Islamist organizations. In August 2017, the Landgericht München II ruled the man to not be criminally liable of the crime and committed him to a closed psychiatric ward.
The Sagamihara stabbings were committed on 26 July 2016 in Midori Ward, Sagamihara, Kanagawa, Japan. Nineteen people were killed and twenty-six others were injured, thirteen severely, at a care home for disabled people. The crimes were committed by a 26-year-old man, identified as Satoshi Uematsu, a former employee of the care facility. Uematsu surrendered at a nearby police station with a bag of knives and was subsequently arrested. Justin McCurry of The Guardian described the attack as one of the worst crimes committed on Japanese soil in modern history. Uematsu was sentenced to death on 16 March 2020, after the prosecution sought the maximum penalty for murder in his trial; as of July 2022, he was on death row awaiting execution. As of 2023, it is currently the deadliest mass stabbing in Japanese history.
The 2017 Turku attack took place on 18 August 2017 at around 16:02–16:05 (UTC+3) when 10 people were stabbed in central Turku, Southwest Finland. Two women were killed in the attack and eight people sustained injuries.
The Flensburg stabbing incident occurred on 30 May 2018, when a female police officer traveling off-duty on a high-speed train in Flensburg, Germany, was stabbed by an Eritrean man. He next attacked a male passenger who came to her aid. The perpetrator was then shot and killed by the police officer. The motive behind the stabbing was not clear. The man was a refugee, who had arrived in Germany in September 2015 and had a history of violent altrications. The incident was not considered terrorism.
Reiner Sturm was a German murderer who murdered two women in Wuppertal. While he was being sought, he murdered a man in Frankfurt because he suspected the man had recognized him. After he seriously injured two other inmates in jail, he remained in detention until the end of his life.
A mass stabbing is a single incident in which multiple victims are injured or killed with a sharp object thrusted at the victims, piercing through the skin and injuring the victims. Examples of sharp instruments used in mass stabbings may include kitchen knives, utility knives, sheath knives, scissors, katanas, icepicks, bayonets, axes, machetes and glass bottles. Knife crime poses security threats to many countries around the world.
The Kawasaki stabbings occurred on the morning of 28 May 2019 in the Tama ward of Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, four blocks west of Noborito Station. Two people were murdered, and 18 others were injured after being stabbed at a city bus stop by 51-year-old Ryuichi Iwasaki. After carrying out the attack, Iwasaki committed suicide by stabbing himself in the neck.
The murder of Tessa Majors occurred near Morningside Park in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, on December 11, 2019. Majors, an eighteen-year-old student at Barnard College, was attacked and stabbed by three teenagers as part of a robbery. Majors was discovered collapsed and bleeding on a staircase exiting Morningside Park and transported to a nearby hospital, ultimately succumbing to the injuries.
On 20 June 2020, shortly before 19:00 BST, a man with a knife attacked people who were socialising in Forbury Gardens, Reading, Berkshire, United Kingdom. Three men died from their wounds, and three other people were seriously injured. Khairi Saadallah, a 25-year-old Libyan male refugee, was arrested shortly afterwards. He was charged with three counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder; he pleaded guilty. In January 2021, Saadallah was sentenced to a whole-life term.
A mass stabbing incident occurred 6 August 2021, on a commuter train in the Odakyu Electric Railway in Tokyo, Japan. Ten people were injured in the incident.
On the evening of 23 August 2024, a mass stabbing took place during a festival celebrating the 650th anniversary of Solingen, Germany, when a Syrian man armed with a knife killed three people and injured eight others. The motive for the attack, according to authorities, was the suspect's "radical Islamist convictions". The suspect is believed to be a member of Islamic State, which has claimed responsibility for the attack.
