A man began stabbing people indiscriminately at a three-year-old boy's birthday party inside an apartment building inhabited mainly by refugee families in Boise, Idaho on Saturday, injuring nine people, including six children, police said Sunday.
Timmy Keener, a 30-year-old African-American from Los Angeles, who was staying in an apartment in the apartment building, has been arrested, Boissi police said. He is not an immigrant. He carried out the attack a day after the woman who was hosting him asked him to leave, police said. Keener has been remanded in custody without bail in Eida County Jail.
He faces 15 charges: six for injuring children, nine for assault with aggravating circumstances, according to prison documents. The documents do not state whether the lawyer has taken over the defense.
Keener probably wanted "revenge" because the occupant of the apartment building that hosted him evicted him, said Boise police chief Bill Bones during a press conference he gave on Sunday.
The woman who hosted Kinner was not injured. He was not in the building when the 30-year-old committed the attack. Keener started stabbing people when he could not find the woman, according to police, who stressed that his motives are one of the objects of the investigation he is conducting.
It was an attack “against the most defenseless among us, our children. "It is (an act) unjustified, outrageous, completely satanic," Bones said. Six victims are from three to 12 years old. Three adults were injured trying to stop the perpetrator. Four victims are in serious condition. It was not clear if they were children or adults.
The victims include people from Syria, Iraq and Ethiopia, Bones said.
The perpetrator, who has an extensive criminal record, did not know the victims. He is expected to appear in court today.
According to the Idaho Statesman, the apartment building accommodates low-income families with the support of a Boise-based nonprofit.
City Mayor Dave Bitter spoke of a "horrific attack" that had nothing to do with the mood of the residents of the largest city in the state of Idaho (225.000 inhabitants).
The majority of Idaho residents are socially conservative. The reception of refugees in it has provoked reactions. In 2015, residents who opposed a refugee reception center in Twin Falls staged a campaign demanding that it be shut down.