A 73-year-old Michigan man has been arrested after he allegedly slit a 7-year-old girl’s throat without provocation.
Saida Mashrah was at Ryan Park in Detroit with another family member Tuesday afternoon. She told WJBK she saw the man approaching her.
“A guy came up to me,” she said. “He pulled my face up and then in the other hand was a knife. He just came out of nowhere and slid the knife on me.”
Mashrah said she kicked him, screamed, and ran. Neighbors heard the screaming and came out to help.
“I just immediately … grabbed some gauze pads, and put them on her … to help her and help her stop bleeding,” said Donna Mockbil. “She goes, ‘oh I’m going to die and nobody is going to be here with me,’ and I started getting tears in my eyes.”
Mockbil’s son followed the suspect until police arrived and took him into custody.
The neighbors helped her get home, and an ambulance took her to a hospital, where stitches closed the wound.
“They said that she’s lucky, she’s very lucky. It was really deep, the cut,” the girl’s mother, Sharhan Mashrah, told WWJ.
The suspect, Gary Lansky, has been charged with assault with intent to murder and felonious assault.
While the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Michigan urged police to investigate the attack as a hate crime, police and prosecutors said they found no evidence of a hate crime and said they believe that Lansky was experiencing a mental health crisis at the time.
He was out on bond for a domestic violence attack earlier this month.
