Indiana woman faces up to 6 years in prison after repeatedly stabbing Asian-American students on bus

A woman accused of stabbing an Asian-American student at Indiana University Bloomington last year because she said she “noticed” the victim was Chinese has pleaded guilty to a federal hate crime charge, court documents show.

Billie Davis, 57, pleaded guilty last week after being indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with violating the Hate Crime Act. Davis had previously repeatedly stabbed the 18-year-old student in the head on a city bus and later told authorities she did it so there would be “one less enemy,” according to the confession.

Davis, who will be sentenced in December, faces a maximum of six years in prison under the settlement with the defendant, as well as probation upon release and the obligation to pay restitution to the victim.

Davis' attorneys Leslie D. Wine and H. Samuel Ansell told NBC News that the agreement, reached after “extensive negotiations,” allows the court to take into account both the crime and her “diminished responsibility” due to mental illness.

“Ms. Davis is now receiving the necessary medication for her mental health issues and has repeatedly expressed remorse for the pain she has caused the victim and her family,” the lawyers said in an email.

The student, identified only as ZF, was sitting in the back of the bus when Davis boarded and sat nearby, according to the agreement. As the student was getting off at her stop, Davis stabbed her in the head seven to 10 times with a knife. Davis eventually exited the bus while another passenger followed her to confront her about the violence.

“The defendant told the passenger that the woman who attacked her was going to blow up the bus because she was Asian,” the agreement states. Davis also shouted a racial slur at the passenger.

When police arrived and arrested Davis, she told them she had “freaked out a minute ago, I hit some girl” and called the student a racial slur, the agreement states.

After the incident, investigators accessed footage from the bus that showed no prior interaction between Davis and the victim, Bloomington police said in a news release.

The victim, who was taken to a nearby hospital, suffered multiple stab wounds to the head, including cuts up to 1.75 cm deep and a hematoma, or pool of clotted blood. The injuries required stitches and sutures, documents say.

The incident shocked many Asian-American students at the university, several of whom had previously told NBC News that they felt they were not adequately supported.

Marah Yankey, then-senior media adviser at Indiana University, said last year that the victim's desire for privacy “limits what IU or other local officials can say publicly.”

“But it does not diminish our university’s commitment to provide support to them, their families, and of course our students, faculty and staff,” she said in an email.

Some pointed out that anti-Asian hatred was particularly concerning because there has been previous racist violence against Asian students in the area. Former IU student Benjamin Smith, a vocal white supremacist, murdered 26-year-old graduate student Won-Joon Yoon outside the Korean United Methodist Church in 1999. Smith, who had been wanted for a series of shootings against blacks, Jews and Asians earlier that year, shot himself that same night.