What happened at Foss High School in Tacoma, Washington, this week didn’t start as some mysterious act of random violence. It started the way a lot of these things seem to start now, with something small that should have never gotten this far. According to investigators, a dispute over a stolen vape pen carried over from the day before, and by the next afternoon a group of students had surrounded 16-year-old Waleed Emad Essakhi in a hallway. Surveillance video reportedly shows Essakhi trying to provoke someone to swing first, slapping his own face and moving in and out of their space, all while reaching into his pocket. Once the punches started flying, the knife came out, and within seconds multiple people were bleeding.
Four students were stabbed badly enough to land them in critical condition, including one with wounds to the chest and side who ended up in the ICU. Another was stabbed in the back. A security guard who ran in to break it up was cut while trying to disarm Essakhi. The suspect is now facing multiple counts of first-degree assault and has been charged as an adult under Washington law.
Foss High School is no stranger to violence. I was writing about the school back in 2007 when Douglas Chanthabouly shot and killed Samnang Kok in a crowded hallway before the first bell. That case turned into a long argument over mental illness, responsibility, and whether the shooter understood right from wrong.
But getting back to the recent stabbings, this is where you’re going to hear the usual argument from ‘responsible gun owners’™. The one that says knives are just as dangerous as guns. On the surface, it sounds convincing when you’re looking at multiple stabbing victims in a school hallway. Those kids were stabbed in the chest, the back, and the torso, and they’re still alive. Had those same areas been hit with bullets instead of a blade, we’d likely be talking about a very different outcome right now. That’s not minimizing what happened here. It’s just showing the reality of the situation. As I tend to say, a knife is a tool that has many uses, while a gun only has one use, to kill.
There’s also an uncomfortable truth sitting in the middle of this story that most people will ignore. While the security guard was an innocent victim, a group of students surrounded someone in a hallway over a vape pen.
That’s part of a bigger problem that doesn’t get talked about enough. Our public schools are starting to feel less like schools and more like prisons where conflict is expected and sometimes even normalized. Schools are supposed to be places where kids learn and socialize, not spaces where beefs get settled with gang intimidation and weapons.
If someone stole my vape pen at work, I wouldn’t be gathering a group of coworkers to corner the guy in a hallway. That would be insane, and I’d probably be the one getting fired and arrested. Somewhere along the line, that common-sense line of thinking is getting lost before kids even make it out of high school.
They’re supposed to be schoolyards, not prison yards. And yet, the way these situations unfold, you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference.
(Sources)
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