A 12-year-old girl brought a knife to Lookout Valley Middle High School and stabbed a 13-year-old boy twice Thursday morning in front of their seventh-grade math class.
"She just got up, and then she stabbed him in the neck and the stomach," said seventh-grader Allen Ray Jr., who was sitting next to the victim when the girl attacked. "I pushed his chair back so he wouldn't get stabbed anymore."
The girl may have been egged on to stab the boy, according to Ray. The victim was minding his own business, other students said, and doing classwork assigned by a substitute teacher.
"'If you're going to stab him, just do it,'" Ray said another boy in class told the girl.
The stabbing sent the boy to an area hospital with a superficial wound and one that was more serious, the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office said. The girl was arrested on charges of attempted criminal homicide and carrying a weapon on school grounds. The sheriff's office would not provide a description of the weapon.
The incident had parents, teachers and community members trying to make sense of what officials described as a freak act of violence.
"I don't remember an attack like this -- ever," said Lee McDade, assistant superintendent of the Hamilton County Department of Education who oversees student discipline. He used to be the school's principal.
"It's a good school, and there's very little trouble that ever happens there," said sheriff's office spokeswoman Janice Atkinson. She and her daughter were students at the school, and her granddaughter goes there now.
The sheriff's office didn't release the incident report Thursday or give many details.
But students shared their experiences as they trickled out of the school accompanied by parents who had come to fetch them. Parents flocked to the school after they saw news reports about the stabbing and got text messages and phone calls from the school district about the lockdown that followed.
"I don't know what was going on between them," said seventh-grader Travis Quails, who was in the math classroom learning about ratios when the stabbing took place at 9:45 a.m.
He indicated the knife was a few inches long.
After the boy was stabbed, Quails said, "he was yelling and screaming and running around. She just sat right there in the chair and rocked back and forth."
"I can't see why she done it," Quails said. "She was actually kind of nice. He's annoying sometimes, until you get to know him."
Sixth-grader Jacob Woods said he saw the victim in the hallway with blood on his neck.
"It's just weird," Woods said. "Me, I'm still kind of nervous."
Parents expressed surprise and dismay.
"It's really scary to me," said Alicia Ray, whose children, fraternal twins Allen Ray Jr. and Gabrielle Ray, were both in the math class. "Especially knowing that my child was right next to [the victim]."
"They need metal detectors, or something," said Anthony Woods, who came to school to get his son, Jacob Woods, and his niece, Brianna Woods, both sixth-graders. "As soon as I heard about it, I was over here. It freaked me out."
Kelly Ledford, a mother of six, learned of the lockdown from a text message and left work Thursday morning to retrieve four of her children who attend the school.
"I'm surprised," Ledford said of the stabbing. "I know there's zero tolerance. [She] shouldn't be allowed back to school."
"It's a parent's worst nightmare," said Annette Tubbs, who left her job as a teacher's assistant in Brainerd to get her three daughters from the school. "I know most of the kids here, and they all seem to be good kids. It just shakes you up. You never expect it to happen at your school."
The boy who was stabbed boxes after school at the YMCA Community Action Project (Y-CAP) Westside gym on Central Avenue.
"He does enjoy the boxing program," program coordinator Andy Smith said. "He hasn't started competing yet. He's brand-new."
Aside from BB guns, no real weapons were confiscated this school year or last in Hamilton County's middle and high schools, McDade said.
In the fall of 2013, a second-grader at Woodmore Elementary School was caught carrying a gun to school. No one was injured, but the school was put on lockdown and the 7-year-old student was suspended.
The resource officer at Lookout Valley Middle High School, Deputy Marie Willerson, will handle the investigation, Atkinson said.
Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at tomarzu@timesfreepress.com or www.facebook.com/tim.omarzu or twitter.com/TimOmarzu or 423-757-6651.