Nelson Blanco is charged with assault with intent to murder after a 2-year-old and her mother were stabbed at a Providence bus stop.

This case is about two questions at once: what police say Blanco did on Wednesday, and whether he can be tried at all. Rhode Island courts have found him incompetent to stand trial before, including in a 2003 case over the stabbing of two 7-year-old boys that ended without a trial. A competency order is not a verdict, and the new charges are accusations that still have to be proved.

Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez said at a news conference Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, that the attack happened around 1:20 p.m. Wednesday near a Family Dollar store at the intersection of Broad and Public streets, NBC Boston reported. Perez said Blanco, who is known to police, encountered the mother and child, began insulting the mother using a derogatory term, then took out a knife and started stabbing the child, who was in her stroller. "It was unprovoked. They did not know each other," Perez said. The Daily Mail, citing the Boston Globe, reported that the mother and daughter were waiting for two siblings to get off a school bus and that the mother crossed the street to get away from him before he followed her.

Several bystanders who were waiting for a bus intervened, Perez said. Police said Blanco then ran to a nearby home on Daboll Street, broke into the basement, and was arrested there without further incident. The Daily Mail reported prosecutors said a bloodied knife was found in a panel box in that basement. The mother, who the Daily Mail reported was stabbed in the shoulder, was treated at a hospital and released. Perez said Thursday that the girl remained hospitalized in critical but stable condition, "fighting for her life." Police have not named either victim. "It's horrific. It's unimaginable," Perez said.

Blanco was arraigned Thursday. The Daily Mail reported he is charged with two counts of assault with intent to commit murder, assault with a deadly weapon, breaking and entering the dwelling of a person over the age of 60, possession of a knife while committing a crime of violence, and possession of a knife with a blade longer than three inches. He was ordered to undergo a competency evaluation and a dangerousness assessment, and Boston 25 News reported he is being held on $200,000 bail. NBC Boston reported he was also due in Superior Court on an alleged bail violation in a previous case. The Daily Mail reported that his next court date, a status hearing on competency, is Oct. 22, that no plea has been entered, and that no attorney was listed for him in District Court records as of Friday.

Blanco's history is a large part of why the case is drawing national attention. NBC Boston, citing WJAR, reported that Blanco was accused in a 2003 stabbing of two 7-year-old boys in Providence that was also described as unprovoked, and that he was found incompetent to stand trial, with psychiatric evaluations describing him as "out of touch with reality." The Daily Mail, citing the Boston Globe, reported that a state behavioral health agency found in 2007 there was no reasonable likelihood he would become competent in the foreseeable future, which effectively ended that case, and that he was found incompetent again in 2018 in a stolen-vehicle case and in a 2024 break-in case. Providence Mayor Brett Smiley called Wednesday's attack a "senseless act of violence." An incompetency finding means a court has decided a defendant cannot understand or assist in his own case at that time. It is not an acquittal, and it is not a finding about the facts. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.