Huntington woman among 4 attacked with acid in France, family says

A Huntington woman was among four American college students attacked with acid Sunday at a train station in Marseille, France, and is “fine,” her father said.

Authorities have said they do not think it was a terror attack.

Charlotte Kaufman, 21, is studying French in Paris for the fall semester, her father said at their Huntington home Sunday night.

“They were simply doing a weekend in Marseille,” Jonathan Kaufman said.

The family has been in contact with authorities and was texting their daughter and watching reports about the attack on CNN.

“We knew early on it was not terrorism,” he said.

The women have been released from the hospital.

“All of them are fine,” he said. “She’s fine.”

The four women attend Boston College. University officials said Sunday that all four were treated at a hospital for burns suffered when they were sprayed in the face with acid. The school identified the other students as Courtney Siverling, Michelle Krug and Kelsey Kosten, but did not release their hometowns.

A 41-year-old woman was arrested as the alleged assailant, the local prosecutor’s office and school officials said.

School officials said in a statement the four women were juniors studying abroad, three of them at the college’s Paris program.

“It appears that the students are fine, considering the circumstances, though they may require additional treatment for burns,” Nick Gozik, who directs Boston College’s Office of International Programs. “We have been in contact with the students and their parents, and remain in touch with French officials and the U.S. Embassy regarding the incident.”

Police in France described the suspect as “disturbed” and said the attack was not thought at this point to be terror-related, according the university’s statement. The Paris prosecutor’s office said earlier Sunday that its counterterrorism division had decided for the time being not to assume jurisdiction for investigating the attack. The prosecutor’s office in Paris, which has responsibility for all terror-related cases in France, did not explain the reasoning behind the decision.

A spokeswoman for the Marseille prosecutor’s office told The Associated Press in a telephone call that the suspect did not make any extremist threats or declarations during the late morning attack at the city’s Saint Charles train station. She said there were no obvious indications that the woman’s actions were terror-related.

The Marseille fire department was alerted just after 11 a.m. and dispatched four vehicles and 14 firefighters to the train station, a department spokeswoman said. France has seen scattered attacks by unstable individuals as well as extremist violence in recent years, including in Marseille, a port city in southern France.

With The Associated Press