Kinston student injured with knife on bus

In an incident Coffee County Schools Superintendent Linda Ingram described as “horseplay,” a Kinston High School student cut another student with a pocket knife while the youths were riding home on a school bus Monday afternoon.

As a result of the incident, Tracy Edwards, 19, of County Road 479, Kinston, was arrested and charged with felony assault, second degree. Edwards’ is out of jail on a $3,000 bond.

Ingram said other students stated a seventh-grader pulled out a pocket knife on the bus and “was playing with it and ran it across his skin and said, ‘this knife won’t cut anything.’

Ingram said other students said they wanted to see the knife. “The seventh-grader actually had the knife turned upside down on the opposite side of the blade that was dull. He was playing around, but unfortunately, Edwards got the knife and raked it across another student’s arm and cut him,” Ingram said.

The superintendent said when the student got off the bus and his arm was bleeding, his father saw it and “as kids do, the father asked him what happened and he said he had been cut. Of course, the father thought he had been attacked maliciously, so the police were notified,” Ingram said. “The student was taken to the hospital, which resulted in four stitches to his arm.”

“No one was mad and no words were passed. It was just an incident of student horseplay and there will be a disciplinary hearing for both the student who had the knife and the student who used it,” she added.

According to the Coffee County Schools handbook, disciplinary action may/will be taken if a student has a gun, knife or other such instruments at school or while riding on a school bus.