Four students stabbed in a fight at Anacostia Senior High School in Southeast Washington Wednesday afternoon are expected to survive, while two of them have been arrested, District officials said.
The brawl broke out around 12:45 p.m., around the same time that someone deliberately set a blaze in the second-floor hallway in the new building, authorities said.
Five students between the ages of 16 and 19 were taken to an area hospital, including one who was suffering from an asthma attack, said D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services spokesman Alan Etter. The other four teenagers suffered injuries consistent with a knife and stab wound, with cuts and abrasions. None of the injuries were life threatening, he said.
Police were investigating the incidents and trying to determine who set fire to a pile of papers in the middle of the hallway.
“Clearly someone set it,” Etter said.
The violence apparently started between two groups of neighborhood street crews, police said.
Amid the chaos and the blare of the fire alarm, officials evacuated the school and sent the students to the football field where more melees broke out.
The school remained locked down as nearly 30 police and fire officials responded to the campus.
Two of the injured youths were arrested and police were weighing assault charges, a police department spokeswoman said.
Last week, District school officials fired a principal at nearby Hart Middle School after two months of violence, including assaults on three teachers. A 14-year-old at that school was charged with carrying a shotgun, and other students ran down the hallways discharging fire extinguishers.
A spokesperson for the school system was unable to provide any details.
