3 students stabbed, Pa. school evacuated

Principal, teacher disarm boy who was ‘very upset with the school’

Video: Crime & courts

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updated 3:43 p.m. ET Jan. 9, 2008

READING, Pa. - Three students were stabbed Wednesday morning at a high school by an angry student who had a canister of propane when confronted by school administrators, school and police officials said.

Police arrested the student at Antietam Middle-Senior High School after school officials disarmed the boy. Students were evacuated.

Principal James Snyder said he and a teacher were responding to a disturbance when they confronted the student, who held them at bay with the canister.

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"He was very upset with the school and with all the people who were in the school at that particular time," Snyder said.

When the boy would not surrender, a teacher swatted the student's arm, knocking the canister from his hand, Snyder said.

"We pushed him to the wall and kept him to a confined area so he wasn't going anywhere," Snyder said. "He wasn't saying anything to us."

Students treated and released
A 16-year-old girl was taken to Reading Hospital with cuts to both hands, hospital spokesman William J. Rudolph Jr. said. Doctors also treated a 15-year-old girl with a small wound to her upper back and a 14-year-old boy with a small wound to his upper right arm, he said. All three were released, Rudolph said.

Jim Greager, 14, said he was in a hallway when he saw another student running down the hall screaming, "Help! Help! Help!"

"People were crying; they were scared. Everyone was calling parents on cell phones. Rumors started flying," said Brian Macluskie, 15.