By Courtney Dentch and Joe Whalen
A series of attacks at three Queens high schools Tuesday left five students and a school safety officer injured, police said.
The three violent incidents, apparently unrelated, occurred at Springfield Gardens High School in Springfield Gardens, August Martin High School in Jamaica, and Bryant High School in Long Island City, police said.
The rash of attacks came just days after a 15-year-old Campus Magnet High School student in southeast Queens had her face slashed five times with a razor blade last Thursday by a female classmate, police said.
In Tuesday’s first incident, an 18-year-old student at Springfield Gardens High School, at 143-10 Springfield Blvd., was hospitalized in serious but stable condition with a punctured lung after an altercation with another teen, police said.
The stabbing stemmed from a dispute between the victim, Darnell McCall, and another student, 19, police said. The two fought in the first-floor hallway during a class change about 11:30 a.m., and the victim was stabbed in the chest with a steak knife, police said.
The wound punctured McCall’s lung, according to police reports. Had the knife been a centimeter to the right it would have hit his heart, said state Sen. Malcolm Smith (D-St. Albans), who talked with McCall’s doctors and grandmother. He was listed in stable condition at Jamaica Hospital and was doing well, Smith said Tuesday.
The dispute apparently erupted over $30 taken from McCall’s locker, Smith said. The lockers at Springfield Gardens High School do not have locks.
Police were still looking for the teen suspected of the stabbing Tuesday afternoon, but he may be a Rockaway resident, Smith said. The steak knife and a screwdriver were recovered at the school, and police were investigating how the weapons made it past the metal detector and X-ray machine, police said.
Just over an hour later, a 16-year-old student at August Martin High School at 156-10 Baisley Blvd. allegedly assaulted a school safety officer within the building. The officer was taken to Jamaica Hospital with facial injuries, and the student, whose name was not released, was arrested and charged with assault, police said.
In Long Island City, three Bryant High School students were stabbed off school grounds at the corner of 48th Street and Broadway about 4 p.m. Tuesday, according to the Breaking News Network. The boys were slashed on their backs and shoulders after a scuffle with a group of teens, police said.
The victims were taken to Elmhurst Hospital Center in stable condition, and police arrested four men, two 16-year-olds and two 21-year-olds on assault charges.
In last Thursday’s incident, Nordia Henriques, a freshman at Campus Magnet High, at 207-01 116th Ave. in Cambria Heights, needed more than two dozen stitches to close the wounds, a source said, after a 13-year-old student attacked her in the school cafeteria.
“They got in some type of altercation during lunch,” the source said. “School safety was on the scene, and they recovered the razor blade.”
Police said the suspected slasher, whose name has been withheld because of her age, has been charged with assault and criminal possession of a weapon in connection with the attack.
An assistant to Campus Magnet Principal Dr. Eileen Davis-Jerome referred inquiries to the city Department of Education’s Office of Public Affairs, which failed to return calls.
Reach reporter Joe Whalen by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 146.
