List of mass stabbing incidents (2020–present)
This is a list of mass stabbings that took place in the 2020s.
2020
Midland, Texas, U.S.
On 14 March 2020, a Hispanic American man, 18, attacked an Asian family at a Sam's Club in Midland. After grabbing a knife from a store display, the attacker punched the father and cut him before attacking two of his sons, aged two and six. A Sam's Club employee and a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer held the attacker down, with the store employee being stabbed in the process. The attacker yelled for the family to "get out of America" during the attack and later told police he attacked them because he believed they were Chinese and responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, though the family was actually Burmese. The attacker pleaded guilty to federal hate crime charges and was sentenced to a total of 45 years in prison.Romans-sur-Isère, France
Knoxville, Tennessee, U.S.
South Hedland, Australia
On 1 May, a fly-in fly-out worker from Perth attacked seven people in a shopping centre. None died but five were hospitalised. Police shot the attacker dead.Vrútsky, Slovakia
On 11 June, one person was killed and five others were injured in a mass stabbing at a school. The perpetrator was shot dead.Berkshire, U.K.
Glasgow, Scotland, U.K.
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. The attacker was cornered in an upstairs room of the hotel where he was shot dead by a police officer. 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.The attacker stabbed and injured six people, including a police officer and hotel staff. The 42-year-old male police officer confronted the attacker and suffered serious injuries to his neck, abdomen, and leg. He later recovered and left the hospital. 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. One was in critical condition.
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. 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.
The attacker, Badreddin Abadlla Adam, was a 28-year-old male asylum seeker from Sudan who had arrived in the UK six months earlier. 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.
Police Scotland announced that the stabbing was not being treated as a terrorist incident. 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." Detectives are investigating whether the attacker was in any way inspired by the mass stabbing attack in Reading six days prior.
Sarpsborg, Norway
On 15 July, a woman was killed and two more were injured in a series of stabbings. The perpetrator was arrested.Manchester, England, U.K.
On 26 July 2020, four people were stabbed in Moss Side in Manchester, England. 17-year-old Mohamoud Mohamed died at the scene. 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. The attack happened a month after a mass shooting in the same area that killed two people.Police were called to a disturbance in Henbury Street, Moss Side, at 7:30 pm. A murder investigation was launched following the death of one of the victims, teenager Mohamoud Mohamed. 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. They were all arrested and charged with murder.
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.
Paris, France
On 25 September 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. The French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin considered this to be "clearly an act of Islamist terrorism." A man from Pakistan, suspected of carrying out the attacks, was arrested near the scene. Six other suspects were subsequently arrested in Paris in connection with the attack.The main suspect was identified as a 25-year-old Pakistani man, who is charged with "attempted murder in association with a terrorist enterprise." The suspect acknowledged having carried out the attack for religious reasons. He claimed to be 18 in order to be eligible for social welfare benefits. Before the attack, he stated in a video that he was seeking vengeance against Charlie Hebdo for publishing caricatures of Islam's prophet Muhammad. 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. 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.
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.
Zielona Góra, Poland
On 29 September 2020, 3 people were attacked with knives in a school.Nice, France
Quebec City, Quebec, Canada
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, and five others were injured.Carl Girouard, a 24-year-old man from Sainte-Thérèse on Montreal's North Shore, was arrested. 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. Police said that the man had, five years prior, expressed to a doctor threats to perform similar actions. On 18 June 2021, Prosecutor François Godin filed a direct indictment, with Girouard set to go directly to trial without a preliminary hearing. 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.
Kaiyuan, China
On 27 December 2020, a man stabbed fourteen people in Kaiyuan, China, killing seven. 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. The suspect, identified as Yang Moufeng, is a man in his 60s.2021
Mwenda, Democratic Republic of the Congo
On 4 January 22 people were killed in a mass stabbing committed by the ADF.Vetlanda, Sweden
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, attacking random pedestrians with a knife. 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. Police said that five different crime scenes were identified, hundreds of metres apart. The police investigation concluded that the attack was not a terrorist act. An investigation by the Swedish National Board of Forensic Medicine found that the perpetrator was not suffering from a severe mental disorder, during the attack. This meant that he could be sent to prison when found guilty instead of a psychiatric institution.Seven civilians were stabbed. The oldest victim was born in 1945, and the youngest was born in 1985. They were all men. All casualties, including the perpetrator, were hospitalised. Three of them were initially in life-threatening, critical condition; two were seriously injured, two others were moderately injured and one individual was slightly injured.
The perpetrator is Tamim Sultani, an Afghan who had sought asylum in Sweden claiming to be 22 years old and lived in an apartment in Vetlanda. 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 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. He moved to Vetlanda in April 2020, from a nearby town. According to his neighbours he spoke Swedish poorly and had no English knowledge, which made communication with him difficult. He was frequently helped by a woman from the social services. He had a previous conviction for drug offences and was known by the police for committing minor offences.
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. 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.