Nebraska woman with schizophrenia fatally shot after holding toddler at knifepoint

A 3-year-old boy was rushed to surgery after Omaha police said Noemi Guzman held him at knifepoint outside a Walmart, then cut him on the face and hands as officers moved in. The child was taken to Children’s Hospital and later was expected to recover, while Guzman, 31, died at the scene after two officers fired when she refused commands to drop the knife.

Police said the attack unfolded April 14, 2026, at the Walmart at 1606 S. 72nd St. Guzman had stolen a large kitchen knife from the store, forced the boy’s caregiver and the child into the parking lot, and held the toddler hostage. Investigators believed the assault was random, adding another horrifying chapter to a case that had already moved through courts, jails and mental-health warnings for years.

NBC News reported that Guzman had previously been diagnosed with schizophrenia and that Douglas County prosecutors had described her as a danger to herself and others. A county judge nevertheless ordered her released from jail in 2024 over prosecutors’ objections, after an earlier case that included allegations she tried to set her father’s house on fire and ransacked a priest’s home the same day.

That history stretched back further. In 2018, a neighbor said in an affidavit that Guzman lured her to a backyard in Omaha and swiped at her neck with a knife. By March 2024, police said Guzman had escalated again, slashing her father’s upper body, dousing him with flammable liquids, tearing apart the house, threatening to kill him and starting a fire. Later that day, officers said, she broke into the rectory at St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church, threatened the priest and ransacked valuable paintings and furniture.

The case now stands as a stark example of what can happen when repeated psychiatric crises collide with a criminal justice system built to punish conduct more easily than it can stabilize a person in acute danger. Douglas County public defender Thomas Riley said the case shows how the justice system struggles to manage mental-health crises and how treatment costs and limited government resources shape the response. For Guzman’s family and the child’s caregiver, the immediate reality is simpler and more brutal: one child survived, but only after a violent encounter that should never have reached a Walmart parking lot.