Mormon Missionary Dies in Knife Attack

Two 20-year-old American missionaries in the central Russian city of Ufa were attacked and repeatedly stabbed, one of them fatally, in an assault police said had nothing to do with their religious activities.


Police said they arrested the assailant, whom they identified as Sergei Chudakov, just hours after the attack Saturday night on Jose Manuel Mackintosh of Hiko, Nevada, and Bradley Alan Borden of Mesa, Arizona f both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' Yekaterinburg mission.


Mackintosh was stabbed in the heart and died.


Borden survived despite multiple stab wounds that punctured his liver and pancreas. Following surgery Saturday evening at the Railway Hospital in Ufa's Dyomsky district, Borden was in "serious but stable condition," said Vladimir Pushkaryov, head of the hospital's intensive therapy unit.


"I hope he survives," Pushkaryov said in a telephone interview.


Police say a heavily intoxicated Chudakov, 32, confronted the two young Americans at around 7:30 p.m. local time as they were coming out of an apartment building, where they had just been visiting a Mormon family.


Instantly having "conceived a dislike" for the two, Chudakov fished out a knife and advanced on them, according to Valery Ryzhov, prosecutor of the Ufa city district where the attack occurred.


The missionaries tried to flee, but Chudakov caught up with them and repeatedly stabbed them. Ryzhov said the knife penetrated Borden's liver, pancreas and rectum and Mackintosh's heart.


Eventually, the prosecutor said, Borden managed to wrest the knife away from Chudakov, but even then the disarmed Chudakov continued to chase the two Americans, who fled despite their stab wounds.


But only for a few more moments, until Mackintosh collapsed. Then Chudakov retreated and headed for home, where police seized him within two hours.


Officials said Chudakov's assault had nothing to do with his victims' religion, and have also charged him with stabbing a male resident of Ufa earlier in the day.


"He was so drunk that he could not have possibly understood what he was doing" in either of the attacks, prosecutor Ryzhov said in a telephone interview from Ufa. "He was just looking to have it out with the first person he came across."


Mormon officials also said they had no reason to believe the attack was aimed against their church.


"There was no religious motivation. It was random," said Alexei Marchenko, a spokesman for the church's Russia mission.


Marchenko said there were no immediate plans to evacuate Borden to the United States. But his mother, Myrna Borden, reached by telephone in Mesa, Arizona, said she hoped her son would come home before the year's end to recuperate.


Myrna Borden said she had already spoken to her son at the hospital by telephone. She said that though the news of her son's assault was "very traumatic," neither she nor her husband, Bradley, nor her four other sons had "any ill feeling" toward Russia over the matter.


"[The attack] could have happened anytime, anywhere," she said.


Ryzhov said Chudakov has so far denied attacking the two missionaries, but will be charged with premeditated murder within the next two days.


If tried and convicted, Chudakov he could face either the death penalty or 15 years in jail. Chudakov was convicted in 1988 of robbery and hooliganism and spent two years in prison, Ryzhov said.


In March, two American Mormon missionaries were seized by two former members of their congregation, who held them in an apartment outside the Volga region city of Saratov and demanded $300,000 in ransom.


The two kidnappers eventually released the missionaries, and were taken into custody by the Federal Security Service. Both were found guilty by the Saratov Region Court in August, with the leader receiving a four-year jail term and his accomplice a suspended sentence.