Man, 73, charged with slashing girl, 7, in throat amid calls for hate crime probe

A Detroit man has been charged after he allegedly slashed a 7-year-old girl’s throat, amid calls from Muslim advocates for the incident to be probed as a “hate crime.”
Gary Lansky, 73, was arrested earlier this week and was charged with assault with intent to murder and felonious assault.
Police said Lansky approached Saida Mashrah, 7, at a Detroit park on Tuesday afternoon and slit her throat with a knife in front of other children, before fleeing the scene.
Mashrah said the man grabbed her head, tilted it back, slit her throat, before trying to stab her in the stomach.
“He just came out of nowhere and slid the knife on me,” she told Fox 2.
Mashrah said she kicked the man before running home to her mother.
Police were called to the home, where officers found the girl with a cut to her throat and being treated by medics.
She was taken to hospital where she received dozens of stitches to her neck.
Mashrah is a Yemeni-American Muslim.
Michigan’s Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) called for the incident to be investigated as a hate crime.
“We urge the Detroit Police Department and the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office to conduct a comprehensive investigation into this matter to determine whether hate was a motivating factor in the attack,” said CAIR executive director Dawud Walid.
Maria Miller, a spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office said in a statement that “at this time WCPO has no evidence of a hate crime in the case.”
Mashrah’s mother, Amirah Sharhan, questioned why her daughter was targeted.
“He came up to her out of all the kids, like why her? It’s unbelievable. I don’t know how to explain it,” Sharhan told CBS.
Lansky’s bond has been set at $2 million with his next court hearing set for next week.