Crazed woman shot by police after kidnapping and stabbing a 3 year old in Nebraska.

 

Bodycam footage shows Noemi Guzman about to stab the child. New York Post. 

A woman was shot and killed by police after she kidnapped and slashed a 3 year old boy at a Nebraska Wal-Mart. New York Post. 31 year old Noemi Guzman confronted the child's babysitter and took the child after shoplifting a knife from the store. She then stabbed 3 year old Cyler Hillman in the face and hand before police shot and killed her. The boy is expected to recover but had to get stiches to close the laceration inflicted by Guzman. Guzman had a long rap sheet and had been found not guilty due to insanity after a crime spree that saw her stab her father, try to burn down his house and then breaking into a church to threaten a priest. She also had a previous conviction for assault in 2018.

***WARNING: THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS GRAPHIC DETAILS. VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED***

An attempted kidnapping at an Omaha Walmart ended with a child injured and a woman dead.https://t.co/WRlvLnFS1a pic.twitter.com/BuDV62DJLK

— KETV NewsWatch 7 (@KETV) April 15, 2026

My Comment:

 Normally I don't cover minor incidents like this one, even if they go viral, but this case speaks to larger trends in law enforcement and criminal justice for what should be obvious reasons. I had wrote previously how the justice system might change how they handle mental illness after the man who murdered Iryna Zarutksa, Decarlos Brown, was found not competent to stand trial.

In a sane world, Guzman would absolutely not be on the streets. Her rampage in 2024 was beyond the pale. Not only did she stab her own father, she tried to light both him and his home on fire. She then broke into a church and threatened a priest and it's a miracle that nobody was killed during that rampage. And she was already a convicted felon for an assault! 

Guzman was undoubtably mentally ill. She appears to have been a severely schizophrenic person and she was apparently off her meds. Her motivations here were likely her mental illness and it's tragic that she wasn't under control. 

But she was supposed to be. She was found not guilty by reason of insanity, but that's not supposed to be a free pass. Instead of institutionalizing her she was let out as an outpatient and was ordered to take her meds. The problem was there was nobody there to actually ensure that she was taking her meds. A lot of people with severe mental illness stop taking their meds for various reasons.

This was a recipe for disaster and it's lucky that Cyler Hillman was only stabbed and not killed. And it's the kind of thing that is sadly predictable. This was an entirely preventable crime. Had the laws of Nebraska had been better, Guzman would have been in prison, getting treatment, or in a secure mental health facility, depending on how the laws would be changed. Something like New York's "guilty but mentally ill" verdict or even just ensuring that folks aren't let out as outpatients would have prevented this crime. 

I do think that there is a growing outrage over these kinds of preventable crimes. People like Noemi Guzman and Decarlos Brown should absolutely not be on the streets and the laws need to change to protect our law abiding citizens from career criminals and dangerous mentally ill people. 

I do understand that the old asylum system absolutely had some downsides. Warehousing the mentally ill did have a lot of injustice involved in it and conditions were poor. But it does seem like it was the better system because at least it protected innocent members of the public from people like this. 

Finally, I do think this is another example of why bodycams backfired on the left. This story would not have gone viral if it wasn't for the dramatic screencap from the officer's bodycam. That means that there wouldn't be more discussion of these insanity laws, many of which were championed by the left in the first place.