Man, 20, charged with murder in Ohio apartment stabbings

By Steve Bittenbender

(Reuters) - A 20-year-old man was charged by a grand jury in Ohio on Wednesday with murdering another man and stabbing four children in suburban Cincinnati.

Prosecutors said Akihiko Clayton broke into a Springdale, Ohio, apartment on July 2 and stabbed Emilio Ramirez, 33, boys aged 14 and 7, and twin 2-year-old girls. When police arrived, they found Ramirez dead.

The children were sent to local hospitals and survived.

While only one person was killed in the crime, Clayton faces two murder charges because the jurors tied one to an aggravated burglary charge and the other to an aggravated robbery charge, according to the 16-count indictment. If convicted on all charges, Clayton faces the death penalty.

Clayton is being held in a Kentucky jail on unrelated kidnapping and robbery charges.

"To break into someone’s home and stab him to death and stab four innocent young children for absolutely no reason is horrific," Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said in a statement announcing the indictments.

The prosecutor's office could not be reached to confirm where Clayton is from.

(Reporting by Steve Bittenbender in Louisville, Kentucky; Editing by Ben Klayman and Mohammad Zargham)