Questions in teacher stabbing
Thu, Nov 21, 2013
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A student stabbed a teacher Wednesday at alternative Midrose High School in Santa Rosa, police said, leading to an hourslong lockdown at both Midrose and Elsie Allen high schools before police took the youth into custody at a nearby home.
Apparently unprovoked, the 16-year-old boy approached his teacher from behind in a classroom toward the end of the lunch break and attacked him with a mechanical pencil as a handful of other students looked on, Santa Rosa Police Sgt. Dave Linscomb said.
Instructor Tyler Ahlborn suffered wounds to his forehead, neck and arm, injuries that police said were not life-threatening.
“Not in my career have I seen something like this,” said Elsie Allen Principal Mary Gail Stablein, who acts as co-principal for Midrose.
Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital officials said Ahlborn was treated and released Wednesday.
The 12:50 p.m. incident occurred at the end of the lunch break toward the north end of the Elsie Allen campus in an area that houses Midrose, a small alternative school for students trying to make up academic credits. The suspect, whose name was not released because he is a juvenile, attends Midrose, which has about 70 students.
During the brief and bloody attack, another student tried to intervene and “pull the teacher and the other kid apart,” Linscomb said.
That student wasn't hurt in the scuffle, and the teacher and the boy who attacked him both fled out of the classroom and into a courtyard. The teacher called 911. Students who witnessed the attack told police they saw the boy head north to a gate in the campus fence that led into the Bellevue Ranch neighborhood, Linscomb said.
Police found the teen about three blocks north of campus at a relative's home on Silver Spur Drive.
Officers found what appeared to be the boy's bloody clothes in the neighborhood along the youth's “escape route,” Linscomb said. Late Wednesday, police had not yet found the pencil, he said.
A man who answered the door where the boy was taken into police custody said he was a relative and the boy lived elsewhere in Santa Rosa with his parents.
The man, who didn't want to be identified, said his family was struggling to understand what took place with the youth and that he was “sorry it had gotten to this point.”
Police don't yet understand what might have motivated the attack, Linscomb said. The boy didn't have a known history of violence, he said.
The stabbing elicited a large-scale police response.
The entire 980-student campus was on lockdown. Students were quarantined in classrooms with the blinds drawn, lights off and doors locked. They were instructed to stay quiet.
Wednesday afternoon, an officer placed yellow police tape around beams in the northern courtyard outside a door under the Midrose High School sign as a police dog sniffed around the bushes.
The Sonoma County sheriff's helicopter flew circles above the eerily quiet campus.
Abigail Suarez, 16, said she and her classmates in a public safety class sat silent, some doing homework but most typing messages to each other and to their families on their cellphones.
“My Dad texted me after the school called,” Suarez said, referring to an automated message school officials sent out to parents. “I was a little nervous.”
Oman Morales, 15, said he was about to take a test in a human anatomy class, but it was postponed.
“I was never scared because I knew what was happening,” Morales said.
At just after 2 p.m., Stablein informed teachers via the campus intercom that lessons could resume, but that students were required to remain in class.
“You must keep all students in the classroom at this time,” she said over the loudspeaker. “You may turn on the lights and you may return to instruction, but you need to keep all students inside the classroom.”
“If any student witnessed the incident that happened at lunch today... you are to tell your teacher immediately,” she said.
Many students contacted home by cellphone and text message, prompting parents and relatives to begin lining up outside the school almost two hours before the final bell, worried about the students inside.
Among them was Julie Hernandez, 29, who received a text from one of two nieces who attend Elsie Allen and who was nervous, not knowing what was going on.
“This is tense,” Hernandez said, as she waited outside the closed gate among a steadily building group. “We're just waiting and waiting and waiting.”
Raul Perez, 27, said he drove to campus after his brother, an Elsie Allen senior, called him and told him about the stabbing.
“They should have more security,” Perez said of the campus.
During the lockdown, Stablein came out to talk to a group of parents gathered outside the schools' main doors and told them the teacher was “doing well” and explained lockdown procedures.
“The lockdown is the safest situation. ... I am treating your children as if they were my own,” she said.
The lockdown ended around 2:45 p.m. and students began streaming out at the regular 3 p.m. bell.
Ahlborn, a graduate of Elsie Allen, has been a teacher at Midrose for approximately five years, according to co-principal Tony Negri.
“Kids really love him,” he said. “Tyler is considered one of the best teachers around.”
Ahlborn, an avid rugby player, teaches English, social studies and a number of other subjects at Midrose.
“He gets along well with the kids,” Negri said of Ahlborn. “He can be jovial, but (he's) a good disciplinarian and gets their attention when he needs to.
“He's very diplomatic, very intelligent,” he said. “He's the kind of teacher you are proud of.”
School officials are expected to meet and counsel students Thursday.
Anyone with information about the case can call the Santa Rosa police violent crimes team at 543-3590.
