“Not Likely to Imperil”: Five Months After Outpatient Clearance, a Repeat Child-Stabbing Suspect Is Charged With Stabbing a Toddler in a Providence Stroller

What happened

On Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026, around 1:50 p.m., Providence police say Nelson Blanco, 46, approached a 26-year-old mother waiting for her older children at a school bus stop near Broad and Public streets. The mother’s 2-year-old daughter was in a stroller. Chief Oscar Perez said Blanco insulted the mother, she crossed the street, and he approached again—then stabbed the toddler multiple times in the face (and the mother in the shoulder) in an unprovoked attack. Bystanders intervened; one chased Blanco as he broke into a Daboll Street home and locked himself in the basement. Officers took him into custody. A bloodied knife was later found in a panel box there, prosecutors said.

The child was rushed to Hasbro Children’s Hospital in critical condition—Perez said she was “fighting for her life.” The mother was treated and released. Blanco faces two counts of assault with intent to commit murder and related charges. In a police interview he admitted the attack; no motive was given. At arraignment Thursday he wore a hazmat suit; the court ordered a new competency evaluation and a dangerousness assessment. Bond was set at $200,000.

This was not a first brush with children or with Rhode Island’s competency machinery. In 2003, Blanco was charged with felony assault after stabbing two 7-year-old boys on Corinth Street in an attack police then called random and senseless. Court records obtained by the NBC10 I-Team show he was sent to Eleanor Slater Hospital—the state’s long-term psychiatric hospital, under BHDDH—after being deemed incompetent. Psychiatric reports from 2003–2006 described him as paranoid and psychotic; doctors repeatedly rated him at “moderate risk of creating a likelihood of serious harm to others.” In 2007, the state’s behavioral-health agency concluded there was “no reasonable likelihood” he would become competent in the foreseeable future, and the criminal case ended. BHDDH has declined to say when or why he left Eleanor Slater, citing patient privacy.

Attorney General Peter Neronha’s office says Blanco was again found incompetent in 2018 (stolen-vehicle case; doctors cited intellectual disability and schizophrenia) and again in July 2026 on a 2024 domestic-violence case. That July, a doctor recommended outpatient status, writing he was “not likely to imperil the peace and safety of the community or himself at this time.” Judge Brian Stern accepted the recommendation—about five months before the Broad Street attack—leaving Blanco free on the street. NBC10 notes the July order stemmed from the North Providence domestic-violence matter; some local reports also place a July 2025 BHDDH-custody release in the timeline.

Asked whether the system is broken, Perez said he does not think so—police collect facts and present cases; courts decide. Witness Jesse Alice Palmer, who helped treat the toddler at the scene, was blunt: “He should not have been out in the streets… The system failed everybody.”