5 students wounded in slashings at Queens High School

New York: Five students were wounded in slashings at a high school Wednesday and were later arrested, police said.

The slashings occurred during a fight that broke out around 12:43 pm at the school, New Dawn Charter High School II in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, according to law enforcement authorities. The five students were involved, as well as a security guard who tried to break it up. Police responded to the scene after a 911 call about an assault in progress.

All five students, who ranged in age from 16 to 18, and the guard were taken to a nearby hospital, where they were treated for minor injuries, including cuts to the fingers, shoulder and face, according to an internal police report. The five students were then taken into custody. It was not clear whether a weapon was recovered.

The dispute began in the school's cafeteria, according to the report, which described it as a "large fight" but said its cause was unknown.

Hector Alberto, 59, a social worker in the building across the street from New Dawn, said he heard a co-worker shout, "Look, there's a fight!" early Wednesday afternoon. When he looked out a window, he said, he saw a tangle of students outside the high school and police officers charging into the fray.

As the fight broke up, Audrey James, 53, who attends classes in a neighboring building, came outside for a look. She said she saw students scattering, police officers at the scene and ambulances with their lights flashing.

"There's too much violence," she said. "It's traumatic."

The slashings come amid a recent trend of increasing behavioral issues and violence in New York City schools. In two consecutive days in December, a 12-year-old girl was slashed in the leg at a middle school in the Bronx and a 15-year-old boy was stabbed at a high school in Brooklyn. Last month, two teenagers were stabbed at Martin Van Buren High School in Queens, which led to school administrators installing metal detectors in the school. Experts say the rising discipline problems may be related to the lingering emotional stress of the coronavirus pandemic.

Major felonies in schools -- a category that includes assaults -- have stayed under pre-pandemic levels, but the number of lower-level incidents has jumped in the years since schools were closed in 2020.

Mayor Eric Adams said last month that a combination of factors had contributed to the increase in stabbings. He suggested that as the city sought to crack down on illegal guns, more young people were arming themselves with knives. Police have recovered more than 1,800 knives, box cutters and razors in schools since September.

Rosemarie Sinclair, a top official in the city's principals union, recently told lawmakers in Albany that school safety had become an "urgent concern." She said educators were battling "a significant uptick in incidents that typically result in suspension," adding that schools needed more staff to handle the rise.

New Dawn is one of the city's transfer high schools, which are smaller schools for students who have previously dropped out or are behind on their credits, according to the Department of Education. Students at transfer schools are typically older than their peers at other city high schools.

Efforts to reach school administrators Wednesday were not successful.