14-year-old New York boy stabs to death schoolmate who may have teased him

NEW YORK - A 14-year-old Bronx boy who may have been teased and robbed by a 14-year-old schoolmate stabbed him to death on Wednesday afternoon outside their school, the police said.

The stabbing took place in front of Intermediate School 117, New York Times quoted the police as saying.

Several boys who said they saw the attack said the victim confronted the boy as he was leaving school, punching him and kneeing him in the nose, the newspaper reported.

The suspect pulled out a knife and stabbed the other 14-year-old as teachers and school safety officers ran over to stop the fight, they said.

"It was scary," Muhammed Ceesay, 12, was quoted as saying.

The wounded boy, Timothy Crump, who was stabbed three times in the torso, was taken to Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Centre, where he died.

A black-handled knife was recovered at the scene, the police said.

They arrested the schoolmate, whose name was not immediately released. No charges had been filed as of late Wednesday.

The report said the suspect may have been teased by and, at an earlier date, robbed by the boy who was fatally stabbed. But as of Wednesday evening, what specifically precipitated the stabbing was not known, and the boy was being questioned by detectives.

Marisol Perez, 43, a neighbour of the boy who was arrested, said the victim was part of a group of boys who had picked on the suspect.

"They used to hit him, bother him, tell him he's a bum, that he didn't have nowhere to live," she said.

She added that her neighbour had been released from the hospital a few days ago and that he had told her he dreaded returning to school. "He knew something was going to happen to him.".

Ms Perez said the boy told her that he had been bullied when he returned to school on Tuesday and that he was feeling very depressed, according to the newspaper.

On Wednesday afternoon, Ms Perez said, she received a call from her daughter, who said something had happened to the boy. She ran downstairs and saw about half a dozen boys banging on his door.

She said she called the police after the boys told her that her neighbour had stabbed one of their friends and that they were planning to kill him. At the apartment where the victim lived, no one answered the door on Wednesday night.

Ms Carmen Fariña, the New York City schools chancellor, offered condolences to the family of the boy who was killed and said grief counsellors would be sent to the school on Thursday. "We are devastated to lose one of our children like this," she said in a statement.

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