The man who stabbed three people last week in a classroom at the University of Waterloo in Ontario will have to appear before a judge again next week.
Geovanny Villalba-Aleman, 24, was scheduled to appear in court Tuesday morning at the Kitchener courthouse, but his hearing has been rescheduled for July 11.
The former university student walked into a classroom on June 28 and stabbed three people. He was charged with three counts of aggravated assault, four counts of assault with a weapon, two counts of possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose and one count of mischief.
It was a hate crime linked to gender expression and identity, Waterloo police said, because the accused targeted a gender studies class.
At the time of the attack, there were 40 students in the class. The 38-year-old teacher was injured along with two of her students, aged 19 and 20. Their injuries were serious but not life-threatening, police said.
The accused was arrested the same day on the university campus. He appeared in court for the first time on June 29.
The rector of the University of Waterloo, Vivek Goel, denounced the attack which injured three people, but also “traumatized everyone in this class, as well as the whole university community”.
“The attacker’s knives caused injuries that will forever change the lives of the three individuals who were attacked. But he also plunged his knife into the heart of the most important value of academic institutions: academic freedom,” he wrote in an op-ed published in the Waterloo Region Record.
He promised to assess the security of the campus, while reiterating the need to have an environment conducive to learning and to denounce all forms of violence, hatred and discrimination.