Teen stabbed at Sisler

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/09/2007 (6828 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A high school student was recovering in hospital tonight after he was stabbed with a butcher knife outside Sisler High School during a lunch break.

Thomas Erin McKay, 19, was wounded in the upper body near the school’s rear doors on Shaughnessy Street. The attacker ran away and remained at large on Wednesday night.

After visiting the hospital, the victim’s stepfather wondered why his son was not safe on school property.

“Things sure have changed since I was in school… Why would they let that kid come to school with a butcher knife? How they let that get in the school system, I can’t believe it,” said the stepfather, who asked his name not be used because he fears retribution from his son’s attacker.

“Maybe they should think about getting metal detectors,” he said, adding he knows of at least one other Winnipeg high school where the devices are used.

He said McKay, a Grade 11 student, was due to start Grade 12 courses next month and also worked hard in a part-time job at a furniture company. McKay is the father to an infant son who lives with the child’s mother.

His stepfather said McKay was proud of his progress as a student and a parent.

“He is a good kid,” he said.

The attack came amid concern about possible campus violence at the University of Winnipeg on Wednesday, the day when an anonymous threat vowed there would be violence. There were no attacks at the university.

After the Sisler stabbing, officials alerted authorities and put the school in lockdown mode, meaning the doors were closed to unauthorized visitors and no students could leave without permission. About 1,700 students between grades 9 and 12 attend Sisler.

Police officers who rushed to the school cordoned off the scene of the attack with yellow police tape.

Several Sisler students said Wednesday they were startled to hear loud screams at about 12:30 p.m. and saw McKay’s tall slim form lying on the ground.

“I saw a kid laying there with blood all over him,” said a male Grade 10 student.

Another female Grade 10 student said she was standing outside the doors when she saw a young man in a white hoodie sprinting past them holding a kitchen knife. She said she knew both McKay and his alleged attacker, who she’d seen in Sisler’s main office registering for courses earlier this year.

“It was huge, it was the biggest knife,” she said. “He was right in front of us.”

The Free Press is not naming the youth identified by the students and other sources as the attacker, but they said the young man used to attend Sisler High School and was angry with McKay over a fellow female student who McKay was friends with.

Other grades 10 and 11 students who attend Sisler High School said they had chased the alleged attacker south down Shaughnessy Street towards a nearby Manitoba Housing project. The students said the alleged attacker ran into a back alley and hid, before escaping.

“We were going to beat him up,” said one youth, who lives in the nearby Gilbert Park Housing Complex.

Principal George Heshka said he addressed students and teachers Wednesday afternoon, though he declined to comment further.

Sisler was built in 1957 and was known as a reputable school, without a history of student trouble despite its location in one of Winnipeg’s less affluent areas.

But as dozens of parents arrived at the school Wednesday to collect their children, some expressed fear that a school with a reputation for “high academics” might now be remembered for violence.

“It’s just too bad, how it’s going to become a stigma over this school,” said Gaylene Hunter, on the sidewalk near Sisler’s main entrance on Redwood Avenue. Hunter’s son, Austin, is in ninth grade there.

Other parents said security is an increasingly important issue in light of shooting attacks at Montreal’s Dawson College in September 2006.

“As a parent, I have great concerns over security… (The stabbing) is the latest in these incidents around North America,” said Paul Croft, president of the board for the Manitoba Association of Parent Councils. Croft said the council would likely be discussing the issue of security in schools in coming months, and drafting recommendations.

“I’d like to see more security in schools, and that doesn’t necessarily mean locking the doors once the kids are inside,” he said, adding as a parent he wanted to see more screening inside schools of potentially violent people. “It’s students, a lot of times.”

Police tried to downplay the frequency of such incidents at any city high school.

“This isn’t something that the Winnipeg Police Service comes to very often,” said Sgt. Kelly Dennison.

Police said Wednesday afternoon they were seeking a suspect in connection with the attack, but no further details were available.

gabrielle.giroday@freepress.mb.ca

joe.paraskevas@freepress.mb.ca