Sept. 27 (UPI) -- One teenager died and another was critically wounded in a stabbing at a public high school in the Bronx, New York, on Wednesday morning.
An unidentified 18-year-old student at the school was in custody at a precinct, police said.
Officials said the two unnamed victims and the suspect were involved in a dispute just before 11 a.m. on the fifth floor in the Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation, which has 545 students in sixth through 12th grades. Several schools are located in a complex in East Tremont section of the Bronx.
The 18-year-old allegedly used a knife to stab a 16-year-old and a 15-year-old, police said. Scissors were found at the scene.
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The young child was pronounced dead at St. Barnabas Hospital with injuries to the chest, and the other teen was transported to the hospital "in grave condition" with wounds in the arm and torso.
"Two of my students got stabbed and one of them died," Kevin Sampson, the school's dean, told The New York Times. "It was about what it's always about, bullying," he said.
He administered CPR to the student who died.
The Urban Assembly, a nonprofit organization that runs 21 small schools across the city, started the school in 2007. It serves primarily low-income and academically struggling students.
The school's mission, according to its website, is "to engage students in a challenging academic program centered on wildlife conservation, to expose them to the wonders of the natural sciences, and to help them to cultivate their life skills so that they are ready to succeed in college and become independent adults who act respectfully within their communities."
The school does not have metal detectors although police recorded 11 public safety episodes at the school in the first half of the year.
"It has been many, many years in this city since we've lost a child in a school in this kind of violent incident, and it is all the more troubling for that reason," New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a WABC-TV report. "It's unacceptable to ever lose a child to violence in a school building, and we will redouble our efforts to protect every child. We will use every measure to make sure every child is safe."
