A 46-year-old Nigerian woman stabbed an Italian police officer in the chest and was charged with attempted mass killing after she opened three gas cylinders in her apartment in Verdello, Italy.
The woman also flooded the rooms fo the apartment building.
Officers responded around 1:15 p.m. Sept. 18 to reports of a dispute at a building on Via Adua that houses 12 mostly migrant families. Officers detected a strong smell of gas and found the third-floor apartment flooded, with broken glass and exposed electrical wires.
Inside, the woman was completely naked, in an agitated state, and shouting incoherent phrases. She grabbed a 24-centimeter kitchen knife from a sofa and lunged at a corporal after one officer slipped on the wet floor, striking him in the chest. The officer was unharmed because he was wearing a bulletproof vest.
Additional officers and emergency medical workers arrived, sedated the woman and took her to Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital in Bergamo. Tests showed she was positive for cannabis but found no psychiatric conditions. Doctors determined she suffered from acute substance intoxication.
Firefighters sealed the building and declared it unusable until it could be made safe due to the various exposed gas canisters.
When questioned, she said she opened an extra canister for cooking and kept a knife to “defend herself from black magic,” according to BergamoNews.
A tenant who entered the apartment after a power outage found the woman with a rope around her neck. The same tenant later said she attacked him with the knife, shouting, “I’ll kill everyone.”
Authorities continued to investigate the motive.
