A second knife was discovered in the Bronx classroom where a student was fatally stabbed last week — after police finished their investigation, the New York Post reported Monday.
The weapon was discovered Thursday, the day after the stabbing, by a custodian at the Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation in East Tremont, who was tasked with cleaning the room after police left the scene.
“They missed it,” Gregory Floyd, president of Teamsters Local 237, which represents school safety officers, told the Post.
A law enforcement source confirmed the knife’s discovery to the Post, but indicated that officials did not think it was connected to Wednesday’s stabbing in which 18-year-old Abel Cedeno stabbed classmates Matthew McCree, 15, and Ariane Laboy, 16.
A teacher confiscated a 3-inch switchblade knife from Cedeno immediately after the stabbing, before the student took himself to the assistant principal’s office where police were called and where he was arrested.
Cedeno stabbed McCree and Laboy after the two were throwing broken pencils at his head following a two-week-long argument the trio had been in prior to the incident, police said last week.
McCree and Laboy were taken to St. Barnabas Hospital, where McCree was pronounced dead on arrival and Laboy was treated for serious injuries.
Cedeno’s family said he suffered years of abuse over his “perceived sexual orientation” and ethnicity, family representative Savannah Hornbeck said last week, adding that Cedeno had reported the bullying to school officials.
Citing student privacy laws, city Department of Education officials could not confirm if Cedeno did file any such reports.
McCree’s stepfather, Kyle Victor, denied reports his stepson was a bully. “He was in no way bad,” he said.
Cedeno was charged with one count each of murder, manslaughter and attempted manslaughter and two counts each of attempted murder, assault and criminal possession of a weapon.
