LONDON (AP) — A man accused of stabbing an 11-year-old girl to death in London’s busy theater district was charged with attempted murder on Tuesday.

Ioan Pintaru put the girl in a headlock and stabbed her eight times, seriously injuring her, prosecutors said.

The girl was hospitalized and required surgery for wounds to her face, shoulder, wrist and neck, said prosecutor David Burns.

Authorities have not given a motive for the attack, but police said there was no evidence of a terrorist motive behind the stabbing and they do not believe the suspect knew the mother or daughter.

The Australian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that two Australians injured in London were receiving assistance. No further details were being disclosed for privacy reasons, the statement said.

The attack occurred around 11:30 a.m. on Monday outside a tea shop in Leicester Square, a tourist hotspot.

An employee of the tea shop and other passersby jumped on the suspect and held him on the ground until the police arrived. A steak knife was confiscated.

“Fortunately, members of the public intervened and prevented further injury to the child,” Burns said.

The girl’s mother was not injured, although it initially appeared that she was injured because she was covered in her daughter’s blood, police said.

Pintaru, 32, a Romanian national who is also charged with a knife offence, was taken into custody and ordered to appear at the central criminal court, known as the Old Bailey, on September 10.

The stabbing occurred during a recent increase in knife crime in the UK, where the situation is tense after days of violence that saw clashes between crowds and police shouting anti-immigrant and anti-Islam slogans in dozens of towns and cities.

The unrest was fuelled by far-right activists who used social media to Spreading false information about a mass stabbing that three girls killed during a Taylor Swift-themed dance event.

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Associated Press writer Charlotte Graham-McLay contributed from Wellington, New Zealand.