A fight broke out Thursday between a 15-year-old Lincoln High freshman and a 14-year-old Lincoln High Freshman in Lincoln High’s hallway. The 14-year-old produced a knife resulting in further injury to both students involved.
While the fight was supposedly short lived and was initially just a fist fight, it quickly became more serious when the weapon became involved. The knife that the 14-year-old pulled out appears to be a large serrated knife with a white handle. The weapon has commonly been confused among the student body to be a ruler, but the official statement by the Lincoln Police Department’s Assistant Chief, Jason Stille, confirms that the weapon used by the 14-year-old Lincoln High Freshman was in fact a serrated knife pulled from his backpack. The type of knife the student used is often used for cutting bread.
The fight occurred in Johnson hallway during the first lunch period of the day and was quickly responded to and put to an end by the school’s Assistant To Athletic Coordinator, Richard Bollen. Soon after, the Lincoln Police Department responded to the call from LHS at around noon.
Luckily, there were not many other students in the area, which made it easier for LHS staff to clear the area to properly asses the situation. While some staff kept students from entering the area, other staff cleaned and prepared the area for students to return.
Lincoln Public Schools Superintendent, Paul Gausman, explained in an LPD update that Lincoln High performed a Hold standard response protocol. According to Gausman, during a Hold response, administration “hold[s] students in their classrooms and out of the hallways while the staff members and security team, in this case police, worked to handle the situation and once police determine that there’s no longer a threat to students or staff the hold was lifted.” However this seems to not have been the exact procedure used, as students and staff were able to freely use the hallways during the incident and were not held in their classrooms. How the staff did actually decide to handle the situation is that they stood by entrances to where the incident occurred, then calmly redirected students away from the scene. No intercom announcement was used to inform anyone of any incident or hold the students and staff in their classrooms.
Soon after the fight was broken up, the 15-year-old left the school seeking medical treatment at a nearby urgent care clinic. While less severe than the 15-year-old’s injury, the 14-year-old student was also injured, with a cut on his right hand from the same knife. Headlines that surfaced soon after the incident described it as a stabbing however, no stab injury was caused or inflicted by either student.
Both Gausman and Stille stated that the students would be facing action including legal and school-related consequences following an investigation of the incident.