A 15-year-old student was stabbed and killed outside his West Baltimore middle school yesterday afternoon, the first killing of a youth on city school grounds during school hours in more than 20 years.
Police got a call for an injured person shortly after 1 p.m. and found the boy in the back of William H. Lemmel Middle School suffering from multiple stab wounds to his upper torso, according to Agent Donny Moses, a police spokesman. The teenager was taken to Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Shortly before 9 p.m. yesterday, a boy about 14 or 15 years old turned himself in at the Northwest District precinct house and said he was there in connection with the stabbing, said another spokesman, Officer Troy Harris, later.
FOR THE RECORD - Several articles and headlines about the Nov. 21 stabbing death of Markel Williams, a 15-year-old student at William H. Lemmel Middle School, did not provide sufficient context about the history of violence in Baltimore schools. On Jan. 17, 2001, just before school began, Juan Matthews was fatally shot near the entrance of Lake Clifton-Eastern High School. The Baltimore Sun regrets the errors.
The boy was being questioned last night by detectives, he said.
School officials said the victim and his suspected attacker were students at Lemmel. The victim was found near the entrance to a charter school, ConneXions Community Leadership Academy, which operates independently in the middle school building.
Education and city officials, including schools chief Andres Alonso and Mayor Sheila Dixon, quickly arrived at the school yesterday. Alonso and Dixon spoke to teachers in the library and to a group of students in a hallway.
"It shows that even as we improve we have extraordinary challenges," Alonso told The Baltimore Sun. "My thoughts are with the families, but this will impact the children, the parents and the community in the school, who have been trying so hard to make the school a good school."
Dixon said grief counselors were at the school and would remain there into next week.
"We have to show young people that there are other choices when they are trying to work out differences," the mayor said outside the school.
The student is the 23rd juvenile homicide victim this year in the city, and the second this week. Steven Graham, 14, was fatally shot in South Baltimore on Tuesday.
City officials said they could not recall a killing of a student on school grounds during school hours in the past several years.
Lemmel and ConneXions, an independently run, public charter school with an emphasis on the arts, have not been untouched by violence this year. In January, Edward Smith, 14, an eighth-grader at ConneXions, was fatally shot in Cherry Hill. And in April, a 14-year-old boy was stabbed in the neck with a pair of scissors during an altercation in a first-floor hallway at Lemmel Middle.
