CHICO, Calif., April 20 (UPI) -- A 19-year-old Chico, Calif., man has been charged with attempted murder and a hate crime in an attack on a college student from Nigeria, police said.
Barry Sayavong was ordered held in the county jail on $250,000 bail after Joseph Igbineweka, 23, was stabbed multiple times in the neck, arms and hands while walking home from a party Sunday.
Igbineweka, the president of the Associated Students at Chico State University, was hospitalized but was expected to recover, The Chico (Calif.) Enterprise-Record reported Tuesday.
Igbineweka said he was walking alone when two men he didn't know approached him and made racial slurs before attacking him. The second suspect had yet to be arrested.
The attack came a week after racial slurs were written on the campus election posters of a Chico State student running to succeed Igbineweka as president of the associated students group.
Police did not say if Sayavong, a Butte College student, was suspected in the defacing of the posters.
