Chinese police say a suspect is in custody in the stabbing of 4 U.S. college instructors

Chinese police have detained a suspect in a stabbing attack on four instructors from Iowa’s Cornell College who were teaching at a Chinese university in the northeast city of Jilin, officials said on June 11.

Chinese police have detained a suspect in a stabbing attack on four instructors from Iowa’s Cornell College who were teaching at a Chinese university in the northeast city of Jilin, officials said on June 11.

Jilin city police said a 55-year-old man surnamed Cui was walking in a public park on Monday when he bumped into a foreigner. He stabbed the foreigner and three other foreigners who were with him, and also stabbed a Chinese person who approached in an attempt to intervene, police said.

A police statement did not give any indication of the motive for the attack.

The instructors from Cornell College were teaching at Beihua University, officials at the U.S. school said.

The injured were rushed to a hospital for treatment and none was in critical condition, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said at a daily briefing Tuesday. He said police believe the attack in Jilin city's Beishan Park was an isolated incident, based on a preliminary assessment, and the investigation is ongoing.

Cornell College President Jonathan Brand said in a statement that the instructors were attacked while at the park with a faculty member from Beihua, which is in an outlying part of Jilin, an industrial city about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) northeast of Beijing. Monday was a public holiday in China.

Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China, posted on the social media site X that he was “angered and deeply troubled by the stabbing” of three U.S. citizens and one non-citizen resident of Iowa. “We are doing all we can do help them and hope for their full & speedy recovery,” he wrote.