Barbara Bachman still critical, USOC says

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More details are starting to emerge about the fatal stabbing of Todd Bachman at a Beijing tourist attraction on Saturday. The knife-wielding assailant also left Bachman’s wife, Barbara, with serious injuries.

Barbara Bachman underwent ‘approximately eight hours of surgery yesterday afternoon and evening’ and remains ‘in critical but stable condition at a Beijing hospital,’ according to an update from the U.S. Olympic Committee.

‘Family members, including her daughter Elisabeth Bachman McCutcheon and son-in-law Hugh McCutcheon, are with her,’ according to the USOC.

Todd Bachman died shortly after being stabbed by an assailant who also attacked his wife and their tour guide at the 13th Century Drum Tower in Beijing.

‘The next 24 hours will be critical,” Dale Bachman, Todd’s second cousin, told reporters during a news conference in Minneapolis. Dale Bachman said that two of the Bachmans’ daughters are now flying to Beijing.

A third daughter, Elisabeth, was with her parents when the attack occurred, but was not injured. Elisabeth Bachman is married to McCutcheon, the U.S. men’s volleyball coach.

Dale Bachman said that Todd Bachman was walking a few steps behind his wife and daughter at the Drum Tower when he was attacked by the knife-wielding stranger. Barbara Bachman heard the commotion and turned to help her husband.

‘That’s when she was attacked,’ Dale Bachman told reporters. “To me, that was a strong indication of her love. She is a fabulous person.”

The assailant subsequently jumped to his death from the second floor of the 13th Century Drum Tower.

Olympic officials said that there was no indication that the assailant knew that his victims had any connection to the Games.

‘For all intents, it appears to be a random attack by a deranged man,’ an American member of the International Olympic Committee, Jim Easton, told the Associated Press. ‘The only thing we’ve heard is they were not identifiable except for a small volleyball pin, which would probably be invisible to a guy.’

-- Greg Johnson

An undated family photo released by Bachman’s Inc., a Minneapolis company, of Barbara Bachman, left, Elisabeth Bachman McCutcheon and Todd Bachman. Credit: Associated Press