Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for January 19, 2007 FATAL SCHOOL STABBING

A follow-up story appears below the initial article.

DA: Student killed classmate, 15, at school

SUDBURY, Massachusetts (AP) -- A 16-year-old student was charged with murder in the Friday morning stabbing of a classmate at a high school in an affluent Boston suburb.

The 15-year-old victim was stabbed in a hallway after a fight broke out between him and another male student in a school bathroom before classes began, District Attorney Gerard Leone said.

Leone called the fight an "isolated incident" between the two students. "There is no thought or belief that anyone else is in danger," he said.

The name of the student charged was not immediately released.

The victim, a freshman, was brought to Emerson Hospital in Concord from the high school in Sudbury and pronounced dead at 8:12 a.m., said Bonnie Goldsmith, a hospital spokeswoman.

State and local police were sent to the school.

Fred Smerlas, whose daughter attends the school, said parents were told that two students were involved in an incident.

Mary Clemens, a 17-year-old senior, said that when she arrived at the campus, students had gathered in the cafeteria.

"We were told by an administrator that someone was stabbed and it was bad, that that person was taken to the hospital and someone else had been taken to the police," Clemens said.

Smerlas said parents were told that students were taken to the school gymnasium after the stabbing.

The school, which has about 1,600 students, is 17 miles west of Boston.

Follow-up story from the Boston Herald...

Cops: Boy slashed L-S High classmate to death

By Laura Crimaldi and Norman Miller
Boston Herald/MetroWest Daily News

A family that moved to Sudbury to put their kids in a “safe” school lost their straight-A son to a knife-slashing teen misfit yesterday in a crime that turned a haven for learning into a scene of numbing horror, officials said.

Prosecutors say the death of James F. Alenson, 15, allegedly at the hands of John Odgren, 16, in a bathroom at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School yesterday before the first bell, was a premeditated act by a troubled teen who will be tried as an adult.

“They had just moved there in September - they moved there to be in a safe place and so the kids could go to a good, safe school,” said the slain boy’s crying aunt, Julia Rossetti, in an interview.

“He was the sweetest boy. He would never hurt a fly. I just want people to know that he was a wonderful boy,” she said. Asked why another student would stab to death her nephew, whose family had recently moved from Natick, Rossetti said, “there is no reason.”

While the Alensons grieved behind closed doors, classmates of Odgren, who has Asperger’s syndrome, a developmental disorder, described a boy with a penchant for the macabre and an interest in knives and bombs.

Brianna Hogge, also a junior at L-S, said Odgren was “always asking how to get away with killing people and talking about how to make acid to make bombs. He was a really creepy kid.”

Police say Odgren dumped the bravado at the murder scene.

Odgren begged: “I don’t want him to die,” police said. Odgren, of Princeton, was waiting with school officials when police arrived.

He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in Framingham District Court on first-degree murder charges and was held without bail.

The morning murder at the sprawling high school sent parents rushing to rescue frightened children. Several teens spoke of seeing Odgren emerging from the boys’ restroom with blood on his hands and remorse on his lips.

Katie Crowley of Framingham, a junior at L-S, said a friend at the school saw the boy they knew only as “Jack” stumble into a classroom smeared with blood just after the attack, saying, “It was an accident, it was an accident.”

Two Lincoln-Sudbury High juniors said Odgren often wore a trench coat to school and talked about murder, forensics and how he wanted to make an acid bomb.

At his arraignment at Framingham District Court, prosecutor Daniel Bennett said, “The timing of the stabbing strongly suggests that Mr. Odgren planned this premeditated murder and took Mr. Alenson’s life.”

Odgren, a tall, thin boy, appeared in court dressed in a paper jumpsuit with paper shoes. He did not speak during the short arraignment. His parents, Paul and Dorothy Odgen, sat quietly in court, clutching their hands. They left the building without commenting.

Police said Odgren stabbed the younger boy first in the abdomen and then in the heart at a little after 7 a.m., Bennett said. There were also cut wounds on Alenson’s neck. Alenson was rushed to Emerson Hospital in Concord, where he was pronounced dead at 8:12 a.m.

Bennett described the weapon as a large knife and said Odgren brought the knife to school.

According to an affidavit filed by Sudbury Police Officer Nathan Hagglund, he arrived at the school to find school personnel, including a nurse, gathered around Alenson’s “lifeless body,” his shirt covered with blood.

School staff told police the suspect was in another room with school officials, Hagglund wrote.

Bennett asked Judge Paul Healy to order Odgren held without bail, but defense lawyer Jonathan Shapiro said his client needed to be in a psychiatric hospital to determine if he is competent to stand trial.

Shapiro said Odgren has Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, and is a special education student. “He’s on a number of medications and he’s under the care of many physicians,” said Shapiro.

The Herald’s Marie Szaniszlo, Jessica Heslam and O’Ryan Johnson and Richard Lodge of the MetroWest Daily News contributed.