Hempstead High Student Critical After Stabbing

Jan 19, 07:49 AM

Jan. 19--A 15-year-old Hempstead High School student was critically injured in a stabbing during a robbery at the school's handball courts Friday afternoon, Nassau police said.

The student, who police declined to identify, was taken to Mercy Medical Center in Rockville Centre in critical condition, said Sgt. Anthony Repalone.

"He's a good kid," said Alexander Flor, the victim's cousin, at the hospital where about a dozen friends and family members had gathered Friday night. "He was just playing handball."

Flor declined to identify his cousin.

Around 3:30 p.m., the student was playing handball with another 15-year-old student and a 16-year-old friend at the school's courts on Peninsula Boulevard, Repalone said.

There, they were approached by a group of at least eight masked robbers, who ordered them against the handball court wall and robbed them of cash and a cell phone, Repalone said.

When the student turned around to look at the robbers, he was stabbed once in the abdomen, and the robbers ran in an unknown direction on Peninsula Boulevard, said Repalone.

Nathaniel Clay, Hempstead schools superintendent, said Friday night there has never been an incident like this before on school grounds. He said the victim was a sophomore.

"The schools will be closed Monday, but we'll be working very closely with the Hempstead police department to make sure there's a police presence Tuesday, both at the middle school and the high school," Clay said.

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