VALPARAISO, Ind. - A student carrying two hidden knives slashed five classmates Wednesday morning as they watched a videotape in Spanish class, authorities said.

Eight students at Valparaiso High School were taken to the hospital, including the accused attacker, identified as a 15-year-old freshman, police Chief Michael Brickner said. All but one of those injured were released by Wednesday afternoon, he said. Five suffered cuts, and the others complained of pain from other injuries, authorities said.

Authorities released no information about a possible motive for the attack, which happened as classes were starting about 8 a.m. at the school about 20 miles southeast of Gary.

Students described a struggle in a hallway and said they saw blood on the floor.

“The kid, after he stabbed them, he ran out of the room, and a bunch of teachers tackled him,” said Clark Hogan, a sophomore. “I saw the lady kick the knife down the hallway. She kicked it against the wall.”

Brickner said that one of the knives was a machete and that the other was a serrated knife. The youth accused in the attack remained in custody.

School Superintendent Michael Benway said that the school did not have metal detectors but that school staffers and volunteers monitored the two doors through which the school’s 2,000 students entered the building.

Brickner said that when police officers arrived, school administrators were holding the suspect, an A-B student who started in the Valparaiso school system this year.

The uninjured students were allowed to leave school about 3½ hours after the attack. Until then, they said, they were kept locked in their classrooms.

“The teachers wouldn’t tell us what was going on,” said one of the students, Danielle Boer. “We were scared.”

Jeni Bell, a spokeswoman for Porter Memorial Hospital, said that some students suffered severe cuts and that one suffered a hip injury. She said the injuries were not life-threatening.



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Does it ever end?

Couple of questions:
Why was there a machete lying around the house?
How did the student get a machete in school without it being noticed?

You'd be suprised. At my high school in 1991 a guy blew up a bunch of trash cans with dry ice bombs for a senior prank. How the hell did he get those in there? I imagine you could hide a machete under your coat.

But this isn't that unusual. Maybe for Indiana, but there are stabbings at high schools all the time. Unfortunately we've grown so numb to it that it takes 5 people getting stabbed for anyone to really notice.

Ah, I always forget that people wear coats...

I guess it just seems that this stuff is getting more and more common, which worries me as a potential future parent. Nowhere is safe. There were stabbing incidents at my high school, but it was the type of thing where you get involved with the wrong crowd first. This seems like it was completely random--kid just decides he's going to stab some random people. Revenge is one thing. This is even sicker.

lol. True, you guys really don't have a need for one down there very often.

Well they did say they didn't release any information about a possible motive which doesn't necessarily mean there wasn't a motive. I'm with you though, I definitely hope it was a case of these guys were picking on him and he was pushed too far. Random things like that scare me.

I could never have imagined something like that happening at my old high school... it's terrible. I suppose it wouldn't be difficult to get it into school. You could have smuggled an a-bomb into my school without anyone noticeing.

when children and teenagers aren't safe in their schools from predators and their own classmates its a very sad state of affairs.

It would probably help if most districts' idea of "school safety" weren't to put one of the least able-bodied, laid back happy-funtime police officers in each school, or if it weren't virtually impossible to expell violent students anymore.

It's sad that I actually sit in class worrying about who might just be ticking bomb.

you can buy them quite easily from wal-mart for like 10-20 bucks............in valpo anyway.........maybe wal-marts in a more urban area don't carry these but they can be had pretty easy in valpo...........

Half the kids at that high school carried machetes with them to school every day. You city people can't imagine what it's like trying to cut through the thick underbrush in the jungles of northwestern Indiana. This is a necessity.

--PunkDavid

It is a sad state of affairs when the school phones a given house to explain to a parent that their child is bullying other kids and they don't do anything about because "my child wouldn't do that". I know way to many parents like that. Aren't their kids the ones on the receiving end of a knife or gun. And the parents still don't understand why it happened. It all starts at home folks. If your kid can't come home and say "I'm being bullied" without negative feedback or you can't understand the school calling, your kids don't stand a chance of ever understanding.

There have always been bullies. There have always been fights at school. There has always been certain degrees of violence in schools. The only difference is that today, as a result of a few heinous incidences, every thing gets blown up by the media into some huge ordeal.

well the point i was trying to make was that he probably went and bought it or had an older friend buy it...........

this is not the only problem this high school has had.........i think this is climax of events that have happened at this school the past months........

not even a month ago a teenager killed himself with a gun that he obtained from a teenager that brought the gun to school for him........and a girl also was caught with some kind of drugs (I forget what exactly....i do know it was stronger than pot)

this school as well as the whole city has a history of trying to sweep it's problems under the rug and look the other pretending they don't exist........

I don't see why it shouldn't be a huge ordeal when kids get stabbed at school. Isn't that a big deal?

Yeah, there have always been fights and violence at school. But isn't it a completely different story when random students are being picked off during class? I don't think students should have to fear who is going to pull a knife and start slicing when they go to school.

Since when is a machete a knife? I always imagined a knife being quite small.

I really worry about something like this happening at the school I teach at. We've been having problems with fights lately, but no matter how many teachers are around, it's impossible to prevent everything. We do the best we can, but there aren't any metal detectors in my school either. It's impossible to tell what a student is going to carry in under their coat or in their backpack without doing a complete search of every kid coming into the building. It's not going to happen.

My school was evacuated for a gas leak on Tuesday.

That was interesting. I just walked home with a couple of friends ... since our cars were impounded basically, we couldn't drive home.