Nora Grace-Flood photo
Hamden High Monday evening.
One student was taken to the hospital and another placed in police custody Monday afternoon after a 14-year-old was stabbed just off of Hamden High’s campus.
A release from Hamden police states that at approximately 2:15 p.m. (15 minutes after dismissal) a fight broke out between two ninth graders, one aged 13 and one 14, in front of a city bus stop on Dixwell Avenue immediately adjacent to Hamden High School.
Contributed photos
Stabbed student’s injuries.
The 13-year-old suspect was put in police custody — with criminal charges pending — after the 14-year-old target approached School Resource Officer Jeremy Brewer and informed Brewer that he had been stabbed. Officer Brewer responded by escorting the student to the school nurse. The student was later transported to Yale New Haven Hospital with multiple stab wounds to the back. Updated: Police reported Tuesday that the student is in stable condition.
“Right now, my thoughts and prayers are with the victim of this attack,” Superintendent of Hamden Schools Jody Goeler said when asked for comment.
In a video obtained by the Independent, the fight appears to begin with one boy punching another in the head. A crowd of high schoolers surround them — and a public bus waits in the background — as they fistfight one another, until the individual who was first punched whips a knife out of his pocket and begins to stab at his peer.
Around 5 p.m. Monday, caution tape surrounded the bus stop. Two police cars sat outside the high school. Groups of students watching video of the stabbing — all of whom said they had not witnessed it in person — cheered and jeered at the virtual scene while waiting by the bus stop.
The scene outside the bus stop Monday afternoon.
Sophomores Jamileen Sutton and Natalie Valez were walking around the plaza, eating Cheez-Its and observing the many news reporters crowded around the scene, when this reporter approached them.
They said they had gone through dismissal as usual earlier that day and learned about what had happened only in bits and pieces through friends and family later in the afternoon.
“My mom came home rushin’, thinking I’m the one who got stabbed!” recalled Sutton. Her mother’s worried arrival was how she found out about what had taken place.
“The school needs to take more responsibility,” the two agreed, stating that they’d feel safer with metal detectors and new forms of security. Sutton made the same suggestion to the Independent in early October, after a student was arrested for bringing a loaded handgun into the high school.
Hamden’s Strengthening Community and Police Partnerships Council held a meeting in early November to publicly address that same incident. During that conversation, Goeler rejected the idea of metal detectors, saying that the high school contains “1,700 metal detectors,” referring to the “eyes and ears of students who are quick to provide us information.”
“We try to build a climate of trust…. Metal detectors don’t provide that kind of trust,” he said. At that meeting, which took place in early November, he also said that “the district continues to invest in additional mental health personnel… security guards… and is currently investigating opportunities to partner with community mental health providers.”
Nora Grace-Flood photo
Jamileen Sutton and Natalie Valez: “The school needs to take more responsibility.”
Increased fighting among students, particularly in Hamden’s high school and middle school, have also been a regular topic of discussion in Board of Education meetings since the start of classes this fall. Educators and administrators in town have consistently said that students are struggling to adapt to social environments since returning to classes during the ongoing pandemic.
Xavier Hayes and Ahmed Sheta — who declined to have their photos taken — were also walking Hamden Plaza alongside Sutton and Valez Monday afternoon. Hayes said he had heard the argument started because one boy had been “interacting with other people’s girlfriends, you know what I mean.”
Neither Hayes nor Sheta had observed the stabbing take place, but Hayes said that one of the kids “was our friend.”
“I don’t know if we can trust him no more,” he added.
So the aggressor who started the physical violence got stabbed? The headline feels misleading.