List of mass stabbing incidents (2020–present)

In late morning on 4 April 2020, a knife attack occurred in Romans-sur-Isère, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France, resulting in the death of two people and the wounding of five others.[1] The attacker, Abdallah Ahmed-Osman, a 33-year old Sudanese refugee, was charged with terrorist crimes.

The attacker entered a tobacco shop, where he stabbed the two owners and a customer, wounding them; he went on to a butcher's shop, where he stole a knife and killed a customer. He then killed another man, the owner of a local theatre who died shielding his twelve-year-old son, and then wounded two people waiting in line outside a bakery.[2]

The suspect was a 33-year-old Sudanese man who had obtained refugee status and a 10-year visa in 2017.[3][4] According to Arabic-speaking witnesses, he shouted "Allah Akbar" when he launched his attack and, at the time of his arrest, kneeled down and recited the Shahada, the Muslim profession of faith.[5] A terrorism investigation was launched. Searches at his home revealed handwritten notes complaining about living in a "country of disbelievers".[6] On 8 April, he was indicted for "assassinations and attempted assassinations in connection with a terrorist group".[7] The attack occurred during the national lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic in France.[8][9]

At approximately 12:50 pm on 26 June 2020, a man stabbed six people in the Park Inn Hotel, West George Street in the city centre of Glasgow, Scotland.[10] The attacker was cornered in an upstairs room of the hotel where he was shot dead by a police officer.[11] Earlier, a police officer had responded to the initial call for emergency services to attend the scene and was injured shortly after arriving at the hotel. Armed response units were then called to the scene, before evacuating all staff members and asylum seekers to safety before attempting to apprehend the attacker.[12]

The attacker stabbed and injured six people, including a police officer and hotel staff.[11] The 42-year-old male police officer confronted the attacker and suffered serious injuries to his neck, abdomen, and leg.[13] He later recovered and left the hospital.[10] A 17-year-old boy from Sierra Leone was stabbed in his abdomen after a struggle with the attacker. The other injured men are two asylum seekers and two hotel staff members, aged 18, 20, 38, and 53; all were admitted into hospital.[12][14] One was in critical condition.[15]

At the time of the attack, the Park Inn Hotel had been closed to all potential guests due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and was instead being used by Mears Group to accommodate asylum seekers.[16][17] A spokeswoman for the campaign group Positive Action In Housing said the hotel was housing asylum seekers for the Mears Group, a housing and social care provider; 100 asylum seekers were said to have been residing there.[18][19]

The attacker, Badreddin Abadlla Adam,[15][20][21] was a 28-year-old male asylum seeker from Sudan who had arrived in the UK six months earlier.[22] He went on a rampage after numerous reports had been made to the relevant authorities by charities and other asylum seekers residing in Park Inn Hotel, who were concerned about his deteriorating mental health, and the potential risk he posed to himself and others.[23]

Police Scotland announced that the stabbing was not being treated as a terrorist incident.[24] Police Scotland Assistant Chief Constable Steve Johnson said, "As would be the case in any police discharge of firearms involving a fatality, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service has instructed the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner to investigate."[25] Detectives are investigating whether the attacker was in any way inspired by the mass stabbing attack in Reading six days prior.[26]

On 26 July 2020, 4 people were stabbed in Moss Side in Manchester, England. 17-year-old Mohamoud Mohamed died at the scene.[27] The incident was the result of a gangland feud between Rusholme Crips and Moss Side's AO, or, 'Active Only'. Both gangs are believed to have grown out of Manchester's notorious Gooch and Doddington outfits.[28][29][30] The attack happened a month after a mass shooting in the same area that killed two people.[31]

Police were called to a disturbance in Henbury Street, Moss Side, at 7:30 pm.[32] A murder investigation was launched following the death of one of the victims, teenager Mohamoud Mohamed.[33][34] The alleged perpetrators and members of Moss Side's AO were arrested the next day. On 12 February 2021, four men were convicted of manslaughter; Daneaco Reid, 19; Jamall Walters, 18; Romeo Daley, 18; and a 17-year-old boy. were all arrested and charged with murder.[35]

Members of the two rival Manchester gangs would often release music and videos taunting and threatening each other, which some believe has led to more violence. In court, some of the music from AO's members was played, lyrics to one particular track said: "I swear that's Mo let's kill him, kill him...". The gang members and music artists often express their allegiance in music through the use of certain hand signals, and wearing different colours, Moss Side's AO wearing the red bandana, and Rusholme Crips wearing light blue.[36]

On September 25, 2020, two people were injured in a stabbing outside the former headquarters of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris. The magazine's headquarters had previously been the site of an Islamic terrorist attack in 2015.[37] The French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin considered this to be "clearly an act of Islamist terrorism."[38] A man from Pakistan, suspected of carrying out the attacks, was arrested near the scene.[39] Six other suspects were subsequently arrested in Paris in connection with the attack.[40]

The main suspect was identified as a 25-year-old Pakistani man,[41] who is charged with "attempted murder in association with a terrorist enterprise."[42][43] The suspect acknowledged having carried out the attack for religious reasons.[44] He claimed to be 18 in order to be eligible for social welfare benefits.[41] Before the attack, he stated in a video that he was seeking vengeance against Charlie Hebdo for publishing caricatures of Islam's prophet Muhammad.[45] The suspect left his village in the Punjab region in Pakistan in early 2018 and came to Europe, following his brothers and other young men from the village. According to Associated Press, villagers considered the suspect a hero for carrying out the Paris attack. The suspect's father championed his son's actions, but was warned by Pakistani police against speaking publicly.[45] In France, the suspect moved to Pantin, a working-class district with many immigrants from North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and Pakistan. He shared an apartment with several other Pakistanis above a Hookah bar.[45]

In December 2020, four Pakistanis aged 17 to 21 were found to have been in contact with the assailant by authorities and were taken into custody. Two were apprehended in the Gironde, a third in Caen and the fourth in the Paris region. According to authorities, they had "spread their ideology and one of them had expressed his hatred against France before the attack". The investigation had also found numerous messages published on the TikTok social media network where the suspects expressed their hatred towards Muhammad caricatures and "glorified" the assault by their compatriot.[46]

On the night of Halloween 2020, at about 10:30 p.m. local time, a man dressed in a medieval costume carried out a mass stabbing in Quebec City, attacking people with a katana-style saber near the provincial legislature, the National Assembly of Quebec. The victims were chosen at random. Two people were killed, Suzanne Clermont, a 61-year-old woman and François Duchesne, a 56-year-old man,[47] and five others were injured.

Carl Girouard, a 24-year-old man from Sainte-Thérèse on Montreal's North Shore, was arrested.[48][49] The police reported that the attacker was prepared to inflict as much damage as possible, and had gasoline containers in his car. The man was not affiliated with any terror group, according to police, but his motivations are unknown.[50][51] Police said that the man had, five years prior, expressed to a doctor threats to perform similar actions.[49][52] On 18 June 2021, Prosecutor François Godin filed a direct indictment, with Girouard set to go directly to trial without a preliminary hearing.[53] On 20 May 2022, after five days of deliberation, Carl Girouard was convicted of the first degree murders of François Duchesne and Suzanne Clermont. He faced life in prison with no possibility of parole within the next 25 years.[54]

On December 27, 2020, a man stabbed fourteen people in Kaiyuan, China, killing seven.[55] As the school was closed at the time of the incident, no students or teachers were hurt. The victims were all passersby, mainly middle-aged or elderly women. The attacker then stabbed and wounded a policeman before being arrested.[56] The suspect, identified as Yang Moufeng, is a man in his 60s.[57]

Some minutes before 14:55 local time, near the street of Bangårdsgatan in the southern Swedish locality of Vetlanda, a man went on a 19-minute mass stabbing rampage in the streets,[58] attacking random pedestrians with a knife.[59] The police received its first emergency calls at 14:54 local time, with the first patrol arriving at 15:10. Three minutes later, the attacker was shot by police and wounded, before being arrested.[58] Police said that five different crime scenes were identified, hundreds of metres apart.[60] The police investigation concluded that the attack was not a terrorist act.[61] An investigation by the Swedish National Board of Forensic Medicine found that the perpetrator was not suffering from a severe mental disorder (allvarlig psykisk störning, a Swedish legal term), during the attack. This meant that he could be sent to prison when found guilty instead of a psychiatric institution.[62][63]

Seven civilians were stabbed.[64] The oldest victim was born in 1945, and the youngest was born in 1985.[65] They were all men.[66] All casualties, including the perpetrator, were hospitalised. Three of them were initially in life-threatening, critical condition;[67][68] two were seriously injured, two others were moderately injured and one individual was slightly injured.[69]

The perpetrator is Tamim Sultani, an Afghan who had sought asylum in Sweden claiming to be 22 years old[68][70] and lived in an apartment in Vetlanda.[71] According to public records, he applied for asylum in Norway using an Afghan passport which said he was born in 1988. Norway rejected his application. He then migrated to in Sweden in 2018 and applied for asylum again, this time saying he was born in 1999. He received a temporary residence permit which was later extended. The Swedish Migration Agency did not send him back to Norway which they should have according to the Dublin Regulation.[72] He moved to Vetlanda in April 2020,[67] from a nearby town. According to his neighbours he spoke Swedish poorly and had no English knowledge, which made communication with him difficult.[73] He was frequently helped by a woman from the social services. He had a previous conviction for drug offences[74] and was known by the police for committing minor offences.[71]

Sultani was prosecuted by the Eksjö District Court but the trial was held in the high-security premises of Jönköping District Court. The trial started 21 May.[75] He was found guilty of seven attempted murder and a minor narcotics offense. He was sentenced to life in prison and deportation from Sweden and ordered to pay damages to each stabbing victim.[59][70]

On March 27, 2021, one person was killed and six others were injured in a mass stabbing in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. A man named Yannick Bandaogo was arrested and charged with second-degree murder.[76][77][78][79] In September 2021, he was additionally charged with one count of aggravated assault and five counts of attempted murder.[80][81] Bandaogo did not know any of his victims. On May 29, 2023, he pleaded guilty to all of the charges.[82] On August 31, 2023, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.[83]

The 2021 Anqing stabbing attack was a mass stabbing in which seven people were killed and 13 others wounded in Anqing, China on June 5, 2021. The attack is believed to have been committed by a single attacker. The attacker wielded a knife and indiscriminately stabbed pedestrians in the streets. The suspected perpetrator was identified as 25 years old and unemployed when the stabbings had occurred. He was later identified as Liang Wu, and was sentenced to death on 15 November 2021 on counts of homicide.[84] The perpetrator reportedly confessed to the crime and was motivated by his family problems, and was a self described pessimist. He apparently viewed his attack as a way to "vent" from his family issues.[85]

Tributes left at the police cordon on Chandos Crescent four days after the murders

In the evening on September 18, 2021, Damien Bendall murdered his partner Terri Haris, her two children Lacey and John-Paul Bennet, as well Lacey's friend Connie Gent at a residential property on Chandos Crescent in Killamarsh, Derbyshire, an outer suburb of Sheffield, South Yorkshire. He had also raped Lacey as she was dying.[86] After being arrested the next morning, Bendall was charged with four counts of murder and later rape of a girl under 13 in connection with the incident.[87][88][89] He pleaded guilty to all charges and was sentenced to a whole-life prison term on 21 December 2022.[90]

Based on phone evidence, it is estimated that murder spree had occurred shortly after 21:42 local time on 18 September 2021. According to prosecutors, at that time, children were preparing to go to bed while Bendall was trying to contact his drug dealer for cocaine. Bendall had killed his pregnant partner Terri Harris, her children Lacey and John-Paul Bennett, as well as Lacey's friend Connie Gent, who was staying there for sleepover, by striking them with claw hammer over their heads. He had also raped Lacey as she was dying from her head injuries.

After committing the murders, Bendall ordered taxi, went to Sheffield to exchange John's Xbox for drugs.[91]

Police officers from the Derbyshire Constabulary attended to reports of a disturbance at a residential property on Chandos Crescent, close to Killamarsh town centre, at 07:26 local time on 19 September 2021. Bendall had also called 999 himself, saying that he would need police and ambulance because he killed four people.

Arriving at the property at 07:39, officers found Bendall outside, with self-inflicted stab wounds on his chest and stomach from a bread knife. Bendall told the officers he knew he would 'be going to prison again', and when asked what he had done, calmly responded with 'I've murdered four people.' [92] The officers then entered the property where they located the remains of the victims. Subsequently, Bendall was arrested under the suspicion of murder.[93]

On 22 September 2021, Bendall was charged with four counts of murder and later rape of a girl under 13 in connection with the incident.[87][88][89] He admitted all charges and was sentenced by Mr Justice Sweeney to a whole-life prison term on 21 December 2022.[90]

In the early hours of the morning of 25 April, neighbours heard screams from a three-bedroomed terraced house in Delaford Road, Bermondsey, in south London, England.[94][95] Police attended at 1:40 am, discovering the bodies of three women and a man inside the house. They were a 64-year-old Jamaican woman, her 58-year-old partner, as well as her 45-year-old daughter, and 28-year-old granddaughter.[94] Police arrested a 28-year-old man at the scene and said they are not looking for anyone else.[94] On 28 April, the man, Joshua Jacques (born 19 April 1994), was charged with four counts of murder.[95]

On October 6, 2022, a stabbing spree occurred along the Las Vegas Strip, killing two people and injuring at least six.[96][97] The incident occurred in front of the Wynn Casino.[98] It is the deadliest stabbing attack in the United States since the 2020 Knox County stabbing.

Security footage shows a man entering the Wynn Casino, where he reportedly asked the janitor to contact ICE for him so he could return to his home in Guatemala. Shortly afterward, he then told a security guard at the Wynn that he was trying to sell his knives. Just before 11:40 a.m. when performers dressed as showgirls were approached by the suspect outside the hotel, he reportedly told a group of four showgirl impersonators that he was a chef at the Wynn. The suspect asked to take a picture with some of the showgirls for free, but they declined. Soon after, he proceeded to stab two of the showgirls. He then began running and attacked 6 more people — a combination of locals and tourists — before fleeing, pursued by witnesses.[99] A man in a bloodstained chef's white jacket was arrested a short time later, and police retrieved a knife from nearby bushes that they believed had been thrown there in the retreat.[100] Police reported that the accused thought that his first victims were "laughing at him and making fun of his clothing", and that he continued the attack to "let the anger out".[99]

The suspect was identified as 32-year-old Yoni Barrios, a Guatemalan citizen who U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement believe entered the United States without passing through a border checkpoint.[101] KSNV obtained records of a 2019 domestic violence charge filed against him in California, which was not prosecuted due to a COVID-19 pandemic-related backlog in the court system and the victim's non-appearance in court.[102] His public defender raised mental health concerns at an arraignment hearing the week following his arrest, and in December, two court psychiatrists found Barrios unable to understand court proceedings or the charges against him.[100][103] He was ordered to indefinite care at a state psychiatric facility until found competent to face charges.

A stabbing attack happened on 10 November 2022 in Brussels, Belgium, killing a police officer and injuring another. Authorities suspect the attack to be terror-related.[104][105] The attacker shouted the Arabic phrase allahu akbar while committing the stabbing.[106]

At around 18:15 (GMT) close to the city's Brussels-North railway station two officers were stabbed before the attacker was shot in the legs and abdomen by another police patrol arriving at the scene. One of the police officers died after being stabbed in the neck. The other wounded officer as well as the attacker were hospitalised.[107]

The suspect is a 32-year-old Belgian-Moroccan named Yassine Mahi, who was born and domiciled in Brussels. He was known to the Belgian security authorities and appeared on a list of radicalized Muslims. In the morning on the same day the stabbing incident happened, he made threats against the police on a police station. Despite the threats he was not arrested but instead brought by the police to the psychiatric unit of the Saint-Luc hospital, where he stayed voluntarily for psychiatric treatment. There he was able to leave the hospital.[108][109] The police checked the criteria for psychiatric surveillance, but because he voluntarily went to psychiatric treatment, the legal criteria was not given.[110]

On 15 November 2022, a vehicle-ramming and stabbing attack killed three Israelis and wounded three others in the West Bank settlement of Ariel. The attacker started by stabbing a security guard at the entrance to the Ariel Industrial Park and then fatally stabbed two men and wounded another during a knife attack at the Ten gas station which was 60–70 meters away. He left the scene with his vehicle which he rammed into a group of cars, fatally injuring a 50-year-old man from Kiryat Netafim. A civilian exited his car to help the wounded man which the perpetrator used as an opportunity to steal the man's BMW and drive off.[111] He drove the vehicle to an area on the road with traffic where he tried to attack more cars. The killer was shot dead by civilians and security forces,[112][113][114] at around 9:48 AM local time, twenty minutes after the attack had started.[113]

An 18-year-old Palestinian man named Mohammed Souf from the village of Haris was identified as the perpetrator. He worked as a cleaner at the Ariel Industrial Park.[112][113] He was associated with the West Bank's ruling Fatah party and his father was a member of the party. Souf did not have a criminal record, but his father had spent time in Israeli prison.[115] His home was demolished by the Israeli military in May 2023.[116]