Students walk out at Marshall High demanding better school security after campus stabbing, after the 17-year old attacker was suspended from school, officials said.
A 17-year-old student was arrested and a 10th-grade boy was stabbed in an attack that happened at Marshall High School Wednesday morning.
“There was a lot of panic and fear as the students went down in the hallway,” said Marshall High School principal Keith O’Donnell. “There was quite a bit of confusion, not knowing what to call it.”
The incident happened a few hours before school ended. The students told police they had a fight in the hallway and someone stabbed one of their classmates.
When police searched the attacker’s backpack, they found a knife and a note on the boy’s phone that said: “I’m going to kill you guys.”
Officials said the note may have been left by the attacker.
Police arrested the student a few blocks away, and he is being held at juvenile detention in Columbia.
In a statement, police said the student was also suspended from school. They said he could face additional school punishment for what they called “acts of violence that are abhorrent.”
The attack happened when the boy was walking down the hallway with a friend who was also stabbed. The two boys were taken to a hospital by ambulance.
“It seemed like they had a short-lived and very strong connection,” O’Donnell said.
The boy told authorities there was no fight when he walked into the hallway and he did not know the friend who was stabbed.
He was a junior and has been described as a good student who “has many friends,” O’Donnell said.
O’Donnell and other officials said while the school doesn’t allow students to bring weapons into school, the incident is not about guns or knives