A Muslim advocacy group is calling for a hate crime investigation after police say a man used a knife to slash the neck of a 7-year-old Yemeni American girl at a park in Detroit on Tuesday.
Gary Lansky, a white 73-year-old, was charged Thursday with assault with intent to murder and assault with a dangerous weapon in the attack, which left the Muslim girl with non-life-threatening injuries to her neck, according to Detroit police and the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
The girl, who spoke to 7 News Detroit with permission from her mother, said she was playing in the park when a man approached her with a pocketknife and lifted her head before sliding the knife against her throat.
“I kicked his legs medium-hard,” the girl said.
The child then ran and yelled for help, alerting people nearby, according to the outlet.
Donna Mockbil, who jumped in to help the child, told 7 News Detroit that she grabbed gauze pads and attempted to stop the bleeding. Her son followed Lansky until authorities apprehended him, the outlet said.
“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 said, recalling the girl’s remarks.
Vernal Newson, a Detroit police official, said that the 7-year-old needed three stitches and that investigators did not find evidence that she was targeted due to her ethnicity, according to Fox 2 Detroit. Lanksy’s family members say he may have been suffering from mental health distress, the outlet reported.
Court records show that Lanksy was charged last week with assault with a deadly weapon and domestic violence in a separate incident involving his wife and sister. Newson said Lanksy may have been experiencing a mental health crisis in that case as well, according to Fox 2 Detroit.
A spokesperson for the local Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office told HuffPost there was no evidence to suggest the attack on the 7-year-old was motivated by hate.
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The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Michigan chapter, however, is calling for a hate crime investigation. It described the attack as “senseless” and said that “the assailant’s true motives remain unknown,” noting that the group has spoken with the girl’s family and the police.
“While the charges faced by ... [Gary] Lansky are serious, we urge the Detroit Police Department and the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office to conduct a comprehensive investigation into this matter to determine whether hate was a motivating factor in the attack,” the chapter’s executive director, Dawud Walid, said in a statement.
An attorney was not listed in Lanksy’s court records. Wayne County prosecutors said in a press release that he was “given a $2 million cash/surety bond with a GPS tether and house arrest.”
