FLINT, Mich. – A Canadian man has been charged with stabbing a Flint airport officer in the neck.
Federal prosecutors announced the charge Wednesday against Amor Ftouhi of Quebec. He’s charged with committing violence at an airport.
The attack just before 10 a.m. Wednesday at Bishop International Airport prompted an evacuation and extra security elsewhere in the city, and a law enforcement official said the FBI is looking at terrorism as a possible motive.
The criminal complaint says Ftouhi stabbed Lt. Jeff Neville with a large knife and declared “Allahu akbar,” the Arabic phrase for “God is great.”
The FBI says Ftouhi said something similar to “you have killed people in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and we are all going to die.”
Neville’s condition was upgraded from critical to stable by Wednesday afternoon, Michigan State Police Lt. Mike Shaw said.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said President Trump was briefed on the stabbing.
Shaw said one person is in custody and nobody else is believed to have been involved.
Witnesses described seeing the suspect led away in handcuffs by police, Neville bleeding and a knife on the ground.
“The cop was on his hands and knees bleeding from his neck,” Ken Brown told The Flint Journal. “I said they need to get him a towel.”
Cherie Carpenter, who was awaiting a flight to Texas to see her new grandchild, told Flint TV station WJRT she saw the attacker being led away in handcuffs. She described the man in custody as appearing “blank, just totally blank.”
Genesee County Commissioner Mark Young said he retired from the Genesee County sheriff’s office in 1997 and said his “good friend” Neville did the same two years later. He said Neville served in various capacities with the sheriff’s office including in the jail, on road patrol and as a court officer. Neville retired from that department as a lieutenant.
Young said he headed to the airport when he learned about the stabbing Wednesday. He said once he got there, he “tried to assess and work with emergency management and emergency response teams from the sheriff’s department, kind of trying to see what was going on.”
“Things were chaotic, but very well organized and under control – how the sheriff’s department was handling things and how Bishop International was handling things,” he said.
A few miles away, officials stationed police officers at Flint City Hall after the incident. Mayor Karen Weaver said in a release the situation was “under control” but that officials sought to take “extra precautions.”
Flint is about 50 miles northwest of Detroit.
Karoub reported from Detroit. Associated Press writers Corey Williams in Detroit, Sadie Gurman in Phoenix, Arizona, and Kenneth Thomas in Washington contributed to this story.
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