A courageous 7-year-old girl had her throat slashed by an old man – and is now sharing the tale in an interview.
Saida Mashrash, 7, was playing in Detroit’s Ryan Park on Tuesday at around 3:45 P.M., cops said. The innocent girl wasn’t worried at all when she saw a man walking in her direction.
“I was playing and then I saw like a man,” Saida told WXYZ Detroit, “I said ‘hi’ to him.”
That politeness gave no pause to Gary Lansky, 73, who proceeded to grab the girl’s head and pull out a pocket knife, according to authorities.
“And he just put up my head and then he just slide the knife on my throat,” Saida told the station Thursday.
The courageous girl said she gave her assailant a “medium hard” kick and ran away before he could hurt her any more.
She ran from the playground towards home, dripping blood along the couple blocks with her grandmother behind her. The family’s neighbors say they heard the little girl’s screams and jumped into action.
Donna Mockbil and her son live next door to Saida’s and came to the ailing girl’s aid.
“She goes, ‘oh I’m going to die and nobody is going to be here with me’,” Mockbil told reporters, adding, “I started getting tears in my eyes.”
First responders would bring Saida to a local hospital where she received twenty stitches across her throat. They will be removed in a week.
“They said she was lucky,” her mother Amira Sharhan tells CBS Detroit, “She’s very lucky. It was really deep, the cut.”
“He came up to her out of all the kids, like why her,” Sharhan added, “It’s unbelievable. I don’t know how to explain it really.”
Gary Lansky was taken into custody and is being charged with assault with intent to murder and felonious assault, according to authorities. His family tell investigators that they believe he was undergoing a mental health crisis.
The Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office says that there is no evidence that the act was a hate crime – but the Michigan chapter of the Council of American Islamic Relations is calling for it to be investigated as such.
Lansky is being held on $2 million bail and will be arranged on October 16th.
