NYC "Assembly School for Wildlife" witnesses fatal stabbing

Calling Betsy DeVos

From FWIW's NY correspondent comes this depressing story of one high school student stabbing another to death.

A Bronx student stabbed a classmate to death with a switchblade and seriously injured another in front of more than a dozen classmates inside their high school Wednesday morning.

Investigators believe Abel Cedeno, 18, plunged the tool into a Matthew McCree, 15, and Ariane LaBoy, 16, around 10:50 a.m. on the fifth floor of the Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation on Mohegan Avenue in East Tremont, sources said.

One of the victims was throwing pens across the room in the middle of a third-period U.S. history class when Cedeno was hit, according to witness Jomarlyn Colon, 16, who was in the classroom at the time.

Cedeno demanded to know who did it, and when the McCree stepped forward to tell him it was an accident, Cedeno pulled a knife out of his front pocket, she said. It was a three-inch switchblade, Police Chief Robert Boyce said during a press conference later in the day.

McCree moved in to strike Cedeno, and Cedeno plunged the blade into the young man’s chest, Colon said.

Then LaBoy confronted the crazed classmate, and Cedeno stabbed him in the chest too, according to Colon.

“He went crazy,” Colon said.

After the melee, Cedeno walked out into the hallway, where he handed the knife to a school counselor — then calmly strolled into an assistant principal’s office and sat in a chair while police were called, Boyce said.

The school serves sixth through 12th grades and is co-located with elementary school PS 67. It’s also a low performer, and kids have told the city they do not feel safe there.

Just 5 percent of pupils there are proficient in math and 13 percent in English, according to last year’s state exam results. And less than half of students polled at the school last year — 47 percent — said they felt safe on campus, well below the city average.

[Speaking from the steps of the NYC Police stables and behind a barn door]  Mayor de Blasio pledged Wednesday to tighten security at the school, which does not have scanners, and implement scanning tomorrow.