The mayor of Gdansk, Poland, has died from his injuries after he was stabbed in the heart on stage at a charity event in an attempted assassination. Pawel Adamowicz was attacked Sunday by an ex-convict who rushed onto the stage with a knife, stabbed the mayor, and shouted that it was revenge against Adamowicz’s former political party. Adamowicz grabbed his belly and collapsed in front of the audience before being rushed to a nearby hospital where he underwent five hours of surgery. Dr. Tomasz Stefaniak said the mayor suffered a “serious wound to the heart, a wound to the diaphragm and to the internal organs,” and asked for people to pray. The mayor later died. After the attack, the assassin said he was wrongly imprisoned under a government led by Civic Platform, the mayor’s former party. The attacker said his name was Stefan and that “I was jailed but innocent... Civic Platform tortured me. That’s why Adamowicz just died.” Police said the suspect was a 27-year-old who was recently released from prison, where he had served a term for bank robberies.
