By MICHAEL GRACZYK
Parents, Eunice Pacheco, right, and LaKesia Brent, left, wait for news about their children outside Spring High School Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2013, in Spring, Texas. A 16-year-old boy has been airlifted from the school in suburban Houston with stab wounds suffered in an altercation at the campus. The Harris County Sheriff’s Office says it responded about 7 a.m. Wednesday to Spring High School to a report of a stabbing. Spring is about 20 miles north of Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
SPRING, Texas (AP) — A fight inside a Houston-area high school escalated into a series of stabbings Wednesday that left a 17-year-old student dead and several others wounded, sheriff’s officials said.
Meanwhile, Spring school district officials have canceled classes at the high school for the rest of the week.
Sheriff’s detectives questioned a 17-year-old male who officials now consider to be the sole suspect in a stabbing rampage at a Houston-area high school, according to a Harris County Sheriff’s Office statement. The statement did not identify the suspect or specify if he is a student at Spring High School, where Wednesday’s attacks occurred. No charges have been filed.
“We believe a confrontation of some sort occurred … that ultimately led into a physical confrontation that produced weapons,” Sheriff Adrian Garcia said. “There has been some information that this may have been gang related.”
Two victims were hospitalized with minor injuries. A third, identified only as a 16-year-old, was in surgery. No other information was available on the teenager who was killed.
Garcia said a “cutting instrument” was used in the attack but offered no details.
Some parents said the fight was the continuation of a disturbance that broke out Tuesday. Officials at the school, which has about 3,500 students, would not confirm their comments.
“Every parent sends their child to school believing school should be one of those safe haven places,” Spring Independent School District Superintendent Ralph Draper said. “This is what we spend our nights and days working toward and what I lose sleep over.
“In my nearly 30-year career, this is the one thing you pray never to experience.”
Parent Tara Campbell said she received text messages from her daughter about the fight and that her daughter said students who witnessed the episode snapped cellphone photos of the victims as they lay on the ground.
Campbell said she intended to have her daughter home-schooled, saying she’s grown tired of fights at the school.
“Last year there were gang fights consistently,” she said. “This is ridiculous. This is an ongoing situation.”
Lakesia Brent said her son, a sophomore at the school, sent her multiple text messages asking her to come pick him up.
“He’s just afraid,” she said, adding that fights at the school were a problem in the last academic year.
The school was placed on lockdown following the stabbings, which occurred about 7 a.m., and students were released to the care of their parents later Wednesday.
Many parents were upset that the school district did not provide them information in a timely manner.
Draper defended the district’s actions, saying they focused on two goals — securing the school and making sure no action was taken to compromise the investigation — before communicating information to parents about what had happened. He said students were not immediately released because some of them were potential witnesses who needed to be interviewed by investigators.
“When street violence pours into the school, it compromises the safety of all our students,” Draper said.
