HONG KONG — An American college instructor has given the first personal account of a knife attack in China that injured him and several others.
David Zabner said he and three classmates from Cornell College, a private liberal arts college in Mount Vernon, Iowa, were leaving a public park in the northeastern Chinese city of Jilin on Monday when they heard a scream.
“I turned around and saw a man brandishing a knife at me. I didn’t immediately realize that this was what was happening, I thought my co-workers had been pressured,” Zabner told Iowa Public Radio from a hospital in Jilin.
“Then I looked at my shoulder and realized, ‘I’m bleeding, I’ve been stabbed.’”
Jilin police said on Tuesday that a man surnamed Cui, 55, was arrested on Monday in connection with the attack. They said he “collided with a foreign national” while walking in Beishan Park, stabbing four foreigners in total, as well as a Chinese national who tried to stop him.
“The police told us he was unemployed and down on his luck, and that someone in our group bumped into the man,” Zabner said. “And he decided to respond the way he did.”
None of the victims suffered serious injuries, police said. Zabner said he was stabbed in the arm six inches below the shoulder and that paramedics arrived about 20 minutes later.
US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said on Tuesday that three US citizens and a non-citizen resident of Iowa were stabbed and that a US consular official visited the four at the hospital in Jilin.
Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, said she spoke with Zabner’s family in Iowa City, which is part of her district. She said Zabner was “fine, probably able to travel and return to the United States,” while the other two Americans were in more critical condition after undergoing surgery.
“They are in intensive care but are stable and talking to their family members,” she told NBC News.
The instructors were in China as part of a joint program with Beihua University established in 2018. Zabner, a graduate student at Tufts University and Cornell College alumnus, previously participated in the program in November 2019 when he taught computer science. science courses.
“I was really excited to see it in the summer,” he said of Jilin, where winters are bitterly cold.
On Monday, a public holiday in China, Zabner and his colleagues decided to visit Beishan Park, a mountainous green space in central Jilin that is home to several ancient temples.
“There’s a great view of the city from up there,” he said.
Violent crimes against foreigners are rare in China, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world. China’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that the attack appeared to be an isolated incident and that it remained under investigation.
Chinese state media initially remained silent about the attack, discussion of which also appeared to be tightly controlled on China’s heavily censored social media. It comes at a time when the US and China are trying to improve relations, including people-to-people exchanges.
Some online commentators expressed concern about how this could affect China’s reputation.
“There are many videos online about how ‘China is safe’ and now this beautiful image of China has been ruined by that attacker,” said a user on the social media platform Weibo.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said on Tuesday that the knife attack would not affect the normal conduct of cultural exchanges between the US and China.
“China is recognized as one of the safest countries in the world,” he said. “China has always taken and will continue to take effective measures to ensure the safety of all foreigners in the country.”
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
