We must ban knives!!!

“We must impose a three day cooling off period for all knives over 1 inch. We must stop the violence. Do it for the children.

Man buys knife, fatally stabs another in mall restroom

PHOENIX, Arizona (AP) -- Something seemed wrong with Bernard Allen as he went to the register and asked for a butcher's knife. Employees at the store noted Allen was acting strangely, though nobody stopped him as he walked out and into the adjoining shopping mall with a new eight-inch blade in hand.

Minutes later, a man was dead. Issaruh Jackson, 31, of Tempe, Arizona, had the misfortune of bumping into Allen in the Fiesta Mall food court restroom on Monday. When he turned around, police said, Allen took out the butcher knife and thrust it into his back.

Police said Tuesday that Allen, 25, admitted to the fatal stabbing and told authorities he suffers from schizophrenia. Police said Allen also admitted to attacking another man, Lathaniel Clinton Brown, 22, with a pocket knife on Sunday at a Macy's store in the same mall.

Mesa Police Chief George Gascon said the attacks appear to be random. In both cases, Allen told authorities he simply didn't like the way the other men treated him.

"You ... disrespected me," he said while attacking Brown, according to court records.

Allen was booked into jail on a first-degree murder charge and a charge of aggravated assault. He made an initial appearance Tuesday and was ordered held in lieu of $500,000 bond. The public defender's office was appointed to represent him, but no lawyer has yet been assigned.

Brown is recovering from wounds to his neck and back and identified Allen from a photo lineup, court documents said.

Allen is a convicted felon with a history of mental illness who spent six years in prison and was released about two years ago, Gascon said.

According to the documents released Tuesday, Brown was in the store Sunday when Allen walked past him and they made eye contact. After he passed, Allen turned around, grabbed Brown by the neck, and stabbed him in the throat with a small pocket knife, authorities said.

The court documents said that Allen visited his doctor morning Monday before going to the mall again. He paid $41.60 for an 8-inch butcher knife at a mall store, took it out of its packaging, and walked into the mall bathroom. As Jackson stood at a urinal, Allen walked up behind him and stabbed him once in the back.

He was spotted by several witnesses walking through the mall with the bloody knife in his hand, and police received several 911 calls, the documents show. He was apprehended minutes after the calls, outside the mall.

Jackson was found on the restroom floor and died before medical aid could arrive.”

“Okay, from now on I'll just use my chainsaw.”

“Hey, it's worked so well in Y2's Britain.”

“Then we will just ban gas powered chainsaws Mr. Foot, and then all a person has to do is outrun the length of the extension cord.”

“WAYCROSS, Georgia (AP) -- A group of third-graders plotted to attack their teacher, bringing a broken steak knife, handcuffs, duct tape and other items for the job and assigning children tasks including covering the windows and cleaning up afterward, police said Tuesday.


The third-graders' alleged crime kit included this steak knife, which was confiscated by officials.

more photos » The plot involving as many as nine boys and girls at Center Elementary School in south Georgia was a serious threat, Waycross Police Chief Tony Tanner said.

School officials alerted police Friday after a pupil tipped off a teacher that a girl had brought a weapon to school.

Tanner said the students apparently planned to knock the teacher unconscious with a crystal paperweight, bind her with the handcuffs and tape and then stab her with the knife.

"We did not hear anybody say they intended to kill her, but could they have accidentally killed her? Absolutely," Tanner said. "We feel like if they weren't interrupted, there would have been an attempt. Would they have been successful? We don't know."

The children, ages 8 to 10, were apparently mad at the teacher because she had scolded one of them for standing on a chair, Tanner said.

Two of the students were arrested on juvenile charges Tuesday and a third arrest was expected. District Attorney Rick Currie said other students told investigators they didn't take the plot seriously or insisted they had decided not to participate. Watch: CNN's Sunny Hostin explains the law »

"Some of the kids said, `We thought they were just kidding,"' Currie said. "Another child was supposed to bring a toy pistol, and he told a detective he didn't bring it because he thought he would get in trouble."

Currie said the children are too young to be charged as adults, and probably too young to be sentenced to a youth detention center.

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WJXT: Confiscated weapons displayed
Police seized a steak knife, steel handcuffs, duct tape, electrical and transparent tape, ribbons and the paperweight from the students, Tanner said.

Currie said he decided to seek juvenile charges against two girls, ages 9 and 10, who brought the knife and paperweight and an 8-year-old boy who brought tape. He said all three students faced charges of conspiracy to commit aggravated assault, and both girls were being charged with bringing weapons to school.

Nine children have been given discipline up to and including long-term suspension, said Theresa Martin, spokeswoman for the Ware County school system. She would not be more specific but said none of the children had been back to school since the case came to light.

The purported target is a veteran educator who teaches third-grade students with learning disabilities, including attention deficit disorder, delayed development and hyperactivity, friends and parents said.

The scheme involved a division of roles, Tanner said. One child's job was to cover windows so no one could see outside, he said. Another was supposed to clean up after the attack.

"We're not sure at this point in the investigation how many of the students actually knew the intent was to hurt the teacher," Tanner said.

He said the teacher told detectives the children involved weren't known as troublemakers.

"You can't dismiss it," Tanner said. "But because they are kids, they may have thought this was like a cartoon -- we do whatever and then she stands up and she's OK. That's a hard call."

The parents of the students have cooperated with investigators, who aren't allowed to question the children without their parents' or guardians' consent, he said. Authorities have withheld the children's names.

Martin told The Florida Times-Union of Jacksonville, Fla., that administrators would follow school system policy and state law in disciplining the students.

"From what I understand, they were considered pretty good kids," Martin said. "But we have to take this seriously, whether they were serious or not about carrying this through, and that's what we did."

Four mothers of other third-grade students at Center Elementary called for the immediate expulsion of the suspected plotters.

Stacy Carter and Deana Hiott both cited school system policy stating that any student who brings "anything reasonably considered to be a weapon" is to be expelled for at least the remainder of the school year.


"We don't want our children around them," Carter told the Times-Union. "The one with the knife could have stabbed my child or someone else's child at lunch or out on the playground."

"This is an isolated incident, an aberration. ... We have good kids," Center Principal Angie Coleman told the newspaper.”

“SITKA, Alaska (AP) -- Not much new happens in this sleepy little southeast Alaska fishing community, and the locals seem to like it that way.


Jason Abbott, center, is led out of the courthouse in Sitka, Alaska, after his arraignment on murder charges last week.

1 of 3 But a call to 911 last week ruined their sense of peace.

A man on a cell phone directed officials to a home where there was a "guy outside stabbing people." The dispatcher heard screaming in the background.

By the time police arrived, three people were dead inside the house, and two more lay outside bleeding; only one would survive. Police don't have a motive for the attacks, the city's first slayings since 1996.

Jason Alex Abbott, a gaunt 18-year-old with a shaved head, has been charged with four counts of murder, accused of using a dagger to kill his grandparents, an aunt and her fiance.

He's also charged with a single count of attempted murder for stabbing another aunt multiple times; she was the sole survivor of the March 25 slayings.

"It was a very horrific type of crime with a lot of blood," Police Chief Sheldon Schmitt said. "It was a very chaotic scene. There was a lot of blood in the home and on the street."

The violence has left this community tucked between snowcapped mountains and the Pacific Ocean a little less isolated from the problems of the rest of the world. Residents hope word of the homicides fades before the city welcomes another 200,000 summertime visitors off cruise ships.

Word of the stabbing hit the streets fast. Drivers were lined five-deep waiting their turn at a curbside rack to buy the latest Sitka Daily Sentinel for details of the slayings.

Three days before the killings, Jason Abbott was arrested for allegedly trying to punch his mother because she had orange and red colored items in her home. He said they were "evil colors," according to court documents.

Authorities said all five people were stabbed repeatedly, and suffered wounds to their backs and fronts, including some defensive wounds.

The survivor, an aunt whom police have not identified but who is listed in court documents as M.R., woke to the sound of her mother, Alice Abbott, 68, screaming, according to authorities.

M.R. went downstairs to see her mother covered in blood and scrambling from the house. She then saw the defendant come at her with a knife, authorities said.

Abbott chased his aunt, catching her in the driveway, where she screamed for him to stop as he stabbed her repeatedly until police arrived, authorities said.

Alice Abbott, Jason's grandmother, staggered outside and collapsed against a police car. She later died on the operating table.

Officers said they had to use a stun gun on Jason Abbott after he put the dagger to his own throat.

Police then entered the house and found John Abbott, Jason's 69-year-old grandfather, in the living room, seated in a recliner, covered in blood.

They later found Elizabeth Abbott, 40, in the bathroom face down in a pool of blood and her 37-year-old fiance, Charles Tate, in a bedroom, also face down in blood.

The suspect's mother -- the victims' daughter and sister -- told The Associated Press that she has forgiven her son, and believes her parents would as well.

"My parents would feel the same if one of them was here," said 41-year-old Kathy Jack. "They would forgive and forget. And that's how our family was."

Jack said she has met with her son since his arrest and gotten his explanation for the events, though she declined to elaborate.

Most people in the town of 8,600 people either knew the victims or the accused or someone close to them. They have questions.

"My 10-year-old came home from school and had a lot of questions," resident Karren Smith said. "I'm just trying to tell him the truth; I'll tell him whatever I can."

Talk of the stabbings could be heard at harbors, the local hamburger joint and the town's signature watering holes, where locals and fisherman congregate.

"I didn't believe it when you told me; I still don't," said fisherman Anchor Lindholm, of Anacortes, Washington, on his 10th fishing trip to the city. "Sitka's always been a quiet little town."”

“I lived in Sitka in the 70's. With all the drinking, drugging and all that goes along with it, it's long been far from a sleepy, quaint little fishing village.”

“How did you like Alaska Mr. Foot? I have thought about relocating.”

“Md. Boy, 12, Kills Man Attacking Mother
Officials Undecided On Filing Charges

By Avis Thomas-Lester and Hamil R. Harris
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 2, 2008; A01



The 12-year-old boy had finished his homework and was playing a video game when he heard his mother cry out. Rushing to her aid, he found her on the kitchen floor, straddled by a fellow resident of their Prince George's County boarding house, the man's hands wrapped tightly around her neck, the boy said yesterday.

"I kept saying, 'Stop! Stop! Stop!' " the boy said, describing the events of Monday night. "But he just ignored me. He didn't stop. He just kept hurting her."

The boy said he grabbed a knife and swung, slashing 64-year-old Salomon Noubissie across the neck and opening an artery. Noubissie was fatally wounded.

The mother, Cheryl Stamp, said she did not immediately understand what had happened. "What did you do?" she said she asked her son.

"He didn't say anything," she said. "But I knew when I looked in his eyes. I said, 'Oh, Lord.' "

Law enforcement officials were reviewing evidence yesterday and had not decided whether to file charges. Their preliminary account of the incident broadly matches that of the boy and his mother.

The case presents exceedingly unusual circumstances: Rarely is a 12-year-old implicated in a homicide, and even less often does a child that age take a life to protect his mother.

"In Maryland, there can be a legitimate defense of third parties in the event of a violent attack," State's Attorney Glenn F. Ivey said. "That is a possibility in this case."

Yesterday, Stamp and her son were secluded in the boarding house on Roosevelt Avenue in the Landover area, curtains closed and doors locked against reporters and neighbors.

Like other neighbors, Turan Queen said she stood by the child. "His reaction was to help his mother," she said. "This was a 12-year-old defending his mother."

Stamp and her son agreed to be interviewed by Washington Post reporters, in part to explain the boy's actions. The Post is not naming the boy because he is a minor.

Efforts to contact Noubissie's family were unsuccessful.

Stamp said she and Noubissie, a Cameroonian immigrant, moved into the boarding house within days of each other about three months ago. They became fast friends, she said.

Stamp said that she is unemployed and that Noubissie had told her he was studying to be a psychiatrist. She said the boarding house is owned by Noubissie's nephew, a Massachusetts resident.

On Monday night, she said, Noubissie was not himself. He started to yell at her and grab her hair, she said. He was speaking in his native French, as he often did, but this time in "a devilish voice," she said. "He was talking crazy," Stamp said.

She said she tried to use "reverse psychology," ordering him to leave the kitchen and go to his room to calm down. His response was violent, she said.

"He threw me into the door so hard it hit my back, and it made my chest start hurting," she said. "Then he threw me to the floor. He threw me down and started choking me. I think that's when my son came in. . . . He protected me."

The boy, who is 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighs 175 pounds, said he acted because he thought he had no choice. "He was hitting her with the broom; then he was choking her," the boy said. "I told him to stop."

He grabbed a knife that he said his family had last used to cut turkey at Thanksgiving dinner.

"I knew I had to kill him so he would stop hurting my mother," he said.

Once she was freed, Stamp said she yelled upstairs for someone to call police. She said her son took her by the arm and led her into their bedroom.

Nearby, Noubissie was flailing and yelling, Stamp and her son said. As the door closed, she noticed the blood coming from his neck. "I didn't know where all that blood was coming from," she said. "He was talking in that language -- loud."

Stamp said she did not realize for several moments that her son, and not she, had been responsible for inflicting the injury that caused Noubissie to release her.

In the bedroom, as they waited for police, the boy did not speak, Stamp said. She sat on a couch, looked down and saw the bloody knife, she said.

Noubissie was alive when police arrived, Stamp said. He was combative with the officers, she said, even as he bled heavily. He died at a hospital. Police sources confirmed her account.

Stamp, who has two adult children and a 17-year-old daughter who lives with the girl's father, said the tragedy was the second to befall her family. She supports herself and her son from "widow's benefits" she has received since her husband fatally shot himself more than 20 years ago. Her eldest son, 27, witnessed the suicide, she said. "I've had enough drama in my life," she said.

The 12-year-old boy said yesterday that he was not happy about what he had done but that he knew that it was the right thing.

"I just asked God again to protect me and my mother," he said. "I told God that I had stabbed him because he was killing my mother. I know he understands, and I think he will keep us safe now."

After the stabbing Monday night, after police had left and neighbors returned to their homes, the two sat and held each other. There was no sleep that night for either.”

“That is not considered a stabbing!”

“British doctors are calling for a ban on kitchen knives to reduce deaths from stabbing. Seriously.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/27/international/europe/27knife.html”

“Huh, a knife was used to defeat an evil person. Maybe banning knives isn't the answer after all.”

“SB, I liked Alaska a lot. Then again, I was there in the good old days when it was still okay to stab and shoot people on a Saturday night.”

“If knives were criminal, only criminals would have knives.

No, wait, they'd still have guns.”

“The 70's?”