A woman stabbed an Asian student on a city bus and told police that now the country was safer because there was “one less person to blow it up.”
The woman, an Indiana resident, was arrested after confessing to the stabbing of an 18-year-old Asian female student from the University of Indiana, several times in her head, in what was an unprovoked and racially motivated attack on a city bus in Bloomington, Indiana.
Police took 56-year-old Billy R. Davis into custody after a witness reported her location to authorities, after following the attacker while she tried to flee the scene after the assault.
According to the criminal complaint, Davis confessed to detectives during her interrogation that she had stabbed the 18-year-old student with a folding knife and told cops why she did it.
According to the Bloomington Police Department, the attack happened inside a bus at around 4:45 pm on Wednesday, January 11, shocking everyone on the bus.
The victim, who was not publicly named, told detectives that she was stabbed out of the blue when she stood up to exit the bus just a few blocks from the Indiana University Campus.
She told detectives she was waiting for the bus to open its doors when another passenger struck her repeatedly in the head, resulting in intense pain.
Responding officers found her bleeding from her head and immediately called paramedics, who rushed the victim to a nearby hospital.
According to a police statement, once doctors cleaned the victim’s head in the hospital, they established that she had multiple stab wounds. A surveillance camera in the bus captured the entire incident.
The footage corroborated the victim’s statement and showed that the victim and the suspect did not interact before the attack and that the stabbing was unprovoked. It also showed the 56-year-old woman stabbing the victim multiple times before fleeing the scene.
Police initially booked Davis at the Monroe County Jail and charged her with felony battery. They later amended the charge to attempted murder and aggravated battery after Davis’ confession.
Indiana University’s Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Multicultural Affairs, James Wimbush, gave a statement that the City of Bloomington had sadly been reminded about the existence of anti-Asian bigotry in its communities and the literally painful impacts it can have.
Wimbush said that no one should face violence of any kind due to their ethnic background or place of origin and that Bloomington and the University community are stronger because of diverse cultures on the university campus.
A report from Stop AAPI Hate group shows that Asian Americans have increasingly been the targets of hate crimes in recent years, especially after the pandemic.
