Rushdie was flown to a local hospital, police said. His condition is unknown. An interviewer also suffered a minor head injury, police said.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul told reporters on Friday that Rushdie is “alive” and “getting the care he needs.” She said a state trooper “got up and saved his life and protected him, as well as the moderator who was also attacked.
“This is a person who has been speaking the truth to power for decades,” the governor said of Rushdie. “Someone who has been fearless there, despite the threats that have followed him all his adult life, it seems.”
Rushdie was introduced at about 10:45 a.m. when the attack took place, according to a witness, who said he heard screams from the audience. He said that a man in a black shirt appeared to be “beating” the author. The witness, who was 75 feet from the stage, did not hear the attacker say anything or see a weapon.
Some people in the audience ran to help Rushdie, while others went after the attacker, the witness said.
Another witness told DailyExpertNews that there were no security screenings or metal detectors during the event. The witness has not been identified as they were concerned for their personal safety.
The witness said the attacker “walked quickly” down an aisle and jumped onto the stage, approached the author and “repeatedly made a stabbing motion with his hand.”
In a statement, the nonprofit education center and summer resort said it is “coordination with law enforcement and emergency services about a public response following today’s attack by Salman Rushdie on the Chautauqua Amphitheater stage.”
Writers like Stephen King and JK Rowling took to Twitter to express their best wishes to Rushdie.
Anger over ‘The Satanic Verses’ haunted Rushdie
The 75-year-old novelist – the son of a successful Muslim businessman in India – was educated in England, first at Rugby School and later at Cambridge University, where he earned an MA in History.
After college, he started working as a copywriter for advertisements in London, before publishing his first novel, Grimus, in 1975.
Rushdie’s handling of delicate political and religious subjects made him a controversial figure. But it was the publication of his fourth novel “The Satanic Verses” in 1988 that haunted him for more than three decades.
Some Muslims found the book sacrilegious and led to public demonstrations. In 1989, the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called Rushdie a blasphemer and said “The Satanic Verses” were an insult to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad, and issued a religious decree or fatwa calling for his death.
As a result, the Mumbai-born writer was under British protection for ten years before the Iranian government announced in 1998 that it would no longer try to enforce the fatwa.
DailyExpertNews’s Paul Murphy and Mark Morales contributed to this report.
