Credit: Wlbt
A 24-year-old man is being held without bond in Albuquerque after allegedly launching a shocking and unprovoked attack on an 8-year-old girl who was out to dinner with her family.
The girl’s father, Britton Rose, is still grappling with the trauma of what happened on April 25. “I mean no one would ever anticipate something like that happening to a little girl going out for dinner with her family,” he said.
According to Albuquerque police, the suspect, Nichalas San Souci, broke a beer bottle over the girl’s head at Saggio’s restaurant on Cornell Drive before stabbing and slicing her neck with the broken glass. The incident occurred without warning and, authorities say, without provocation.
“She had a large goose egg on the back of her head, that’s where the bottle broke,” Rose recounted. “She did nothing; my daughter did nothing to provoke this attack in any way.”
Court documents reveal that San Souci claimed the child was “in his way,” a statement that has left both investigators and the public stunned. Despite the violence of the attack, the girl fortunately did not suffer life-threatening injuries but required 19 stitches for her wounds.
Legal expert John Day called the assault a “horrific crime against a little 8-year-old girl who was just having pizza with her family.”
San Souci was arraigned Monday and pleaded not guilty to multiple felony charges, including child abuse resulting in great bodily harm, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
“If convicted of everything, he is looking at upwards of 25 years in a state prison,” Day said.
Rose expressed relief that the suspect remains behind bars while the case proceeds. “We’re extremely lucky that our daughter wasn’t hurt any worse than she was or even killed, because that’s what we feel he was trying to do. He was trying to kill her,” he said.
The motive behind the brutal assault remains unclear, and the case is still under active investigation by local authorities.
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