A Berks County Court jury has convicted a man of stabbing his uncle eight times in Cumru Township in 2025.
James Rice, 41, was convicted Tuesday of attempted homicide, aggravated assault, possessing an instrument of crime and defiant trespassing.
Rice was returned to Berks County Jail to await sentencing before Judge Eleni Dimitriou Geishauser in October.
District Attorney John T. Adams said Thursday that Rice confronted his 61-year-old uncle for not telling him that his grandmother had died about a year earlier.
“The defendant’s grandmother died about a year earlier and he was upset that his uncle didn’t tell him his grandmother had died,” Adams said. “He found out that his grandmother had died about a year later, and he went to the uncle’s house and confronted him and this is the point where a confrontation takes place and he stabbed his uncle eight times.”
According to authorities:
Cumru police were dispatched Oct. 20, 2025, at 4:40 p.m. to the 1700 block of Acorn Drive for a report of an assault involving the stabbing of a man.
Officers found the victim alert and conscious, suffering from multiple stab wounds.
He told police that he had been stabbed by Rice, his nephew, who had no permanent address at the time. The victim was transported to Reading Hospital for treatment.
Rice had fled in his vehicle, and police asked the public for help in locating him.
Detectives obtained information for Rice’s phone, which provided his location in Maryland.
That information was passed along to Maryland State Police, who went to a rest stop in Hagerstown and took Rice into custody without incident shortly after midnight on Oct. 21.