Thursday, April 16, 2026 - Two officers in Omaha f@tally shot a woman who held a kitchen knife and aimed it at a 3-year-old boy in a Walmart parking lot on Tuesday, April 14.
The woman, identified by the authorities as Noemi Guzman,
31, “was making multiple threats” and did not comply with requests to drop the
weapon, the department said in a news release.
“She refused to drop the weapon and cut the boy,” the
police’s statement said.
The two patrol officers “fired their service weapons
striking Ms. Guzman.”
The episode unfolded shortly after 9 a.m., when the two
officers from the Omaha Police Department arrived at the store to respond to
calls to 911, including one that described a woman who was armed with a “large
kitchen knife” and was with a child.
Store surveillance video shows that Ms. Guzman stole the
knife from inside the store and brandished it at the child and his babysitter
in an aisle.
She “forced the guardian to walk ahead of the cart while the
child remained inside” it, and then directed them to the parking lot, the
police statement said.
Officers tried to provide aid to Ms. Guzman after the
shooting, but she di£d at the scene, the police said.
After the shooting, the boy’s guardian and a bystander, who
were not identified, removed him from the cart, and he was taken to Children’s
Nebraska hospital, where he was treated for injuries that were not
life-threatening, the statement said.
The officers, Brian Seaton and Roger Oseka, each have 22
years of service in the department. They were placed on paid leave, in line
with policy after critical incidents.
The investigation into the shooting is being conducted
jointly with Nebraska State Patrol and the Douglas and Sarpy County Sheriff’s
Offices.
The boy’s mother, Sara Hillman, said on Wednesday, April 15,
in a post on social media that her son had 17 to 20 stitches in his face and
more in his hand.
“A situation unfolded that no family should ever have to
experience. Our 3-year-old was put in a life-threatening situation by someone
who should have never been in a position to harm anyone,” she wrote.
Ms. Hillman said Ms. Guzman was not known to her family or
the family friend who was looking after her son that day. She said the police
had told her the woman had a history of arrests.
Ms. Guzman had been arrested in 2024 after, police
said, she cut her father with a knife and tried to break in to a church. A
clerk in the district court of Douglas County, Neb., said by telephone on
Wednesday that she had been found “not responsible by reason of insanity” for
the charges of assault, arson, burglary and criminal mischief stemming from
those allegations.
The case was still open as she underwent competency
hearings.
Lt. Neal Bonacci, a police spokesman, said in an interview
on Wednesday that the officers had no idea that Ms. Guzman was the same person
whom officers from the department had taken to the hospital earlier that same
day to be treated for injuries related to a domestic disturbance.
He said the time that elapsed between their arrival at
Walmart and opening fire was approximately 30 seconds.
The episode at the Walmart was also recorded on body cameras
worn by the officers. Still images taken from the footage and published by the
police show Ms. Guzman standing next to the boy with the raised knife.
Scott Gray, the executive deputy police chief, told
reporters in Omaha on Tuesday that the video showed she was “swiping the knife
at the child, cutting him across the face.”
The family of the boy sent photographs of the
injury to KETV, which show the child received stitches for a gash on the side
of his face.
“The responding officers acted with professionalism and
direct action to intervene and save a child’s life,” Chief Todd Schmaderer of
the Omaha Police Department said in the statement.
When the investigation is completed, the case will be
presented to a grand jury as required by law in Nebraska when a person dies in
the custody of the police or during an arrest, the police said on Wednesday
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