Man Stabs Nine Refugees, Including Six Children, at Child's Birthday Party

A man armed with a knife attacked a 3-year-old’s birthday party at an apartment complex in Boise, ID last night, injuring nine people. Six of the victims were children.

According to Boise police chief Bill Bones and reports by the Idaho Statesman, 30 year-old Timothy Kinner of Los Angeles had been given a place to stay by a tenant in one of the apartments, but had been forced to leave the Wylie Street Station apartment “due to his behavior.” He returned on Saturday to “exact vengeance, not just on those at the apartment he had been with, as they were not at the apartment, but any target which was available,” Bones said at a Sunday press conference. The birthday party was a few doors down from that apartment.

Bones said that when officers arrived on the scene, Kinner gave up “without any type of struggled” and was taken into custody. “Officers continued into the scene, finding a chaotic and tragic area in which nine members of our community were stabbed and lay injured,” Bones said.

Bones said that Kinner targeted the children first, and his victims included the 3-year-old, two 4-year-olds, and children aged six, eight, and 12, and three adults who stepped in to protect the children. All nine of the victims were hospitalized. Bones said that all of the victims survived, but that some “lives do remain in danger.” He said that some of the victims suffered “lifechanging injuries,” and that one child had been flown to Salt Lake City for treatment for their injuries.

Bones said that Kinner has been charged with nine counts of aggravated battery and six counts of injury to child, which are all felonies, and that more charges could be forthcoming.

“This was a brutal crime not just against the individuals involved, but against the families and the very fabric of our community,” Bones said at the press conference. “The crime scene, the faces of the parents struggling, the tears coming down their faces, the faces of the children in their hospital beds, will be something I carry with me for the rest of my life, as will every first responder who was there last night.”