A 15-year-old male student was fatally stabbed at a high school in St. Paul on Friday, and a 16-year-old boy was arrested, police said.
The victim and suspect were both students at Harding High School, police Sgt. Mike Ernster said.
Investigators were working to determine what led up to the stabbing. Ernster said the preliminary investigation indicates that no one else was involved.
The school district said on Twitter that it locked down the high school at about 11:45 a.m. “due to a serious incident.” School was dismissed and students were sent home at about 1:20 p.m. All evening and weekend school events have been canceled.
Tish Tensley told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that her daughter, a sophomore, called her Friday morning and asked to be picked up immediately because someone had been stabbed.
“I told her that she needed to stay calm and that she needed to sit tight, because if she’s on lockdown, then there’s no way that I could get her out,” Tensley said.
The incident comes less than a month after a 15-year-old was arrested with a handgun at the school, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press. No one was hurt in that incident.
Tensley and another parent, Felicia Henderson, said violence has escalated at the school in recent years. Tensley said a group of boys assaulted a girl two weeks ago near the school’s entrance, sparking a brawl among dozens of kids while parents frantically tried to load their kids into their cars.
“There was no police presence at the time,” Henderson said. “There was just kids fighting.”
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This story was corrected to show last name of police spokesman is Ernster.
