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A 15-year-old freshman was fatally stabbed in front of his DC high school on Wednesday (August 18) 15 minutes after school let out. A detective testified in court that the stabbing took place after a fight that started over one student bumping into another.
According to The Washington Post, Kemon Payne was fatally stabbed as students were being dismissed from the building. A detective, testifying at a juvenile court hearing for the 16-year-old charged with Payne’s stabbing death said the accused teen saw two youths fighting after one bumped into the other.
Police said Payne confronted the 16-year-old now charged in his murder and they fought, during which Payne was stabbed twice in the chest. Payne died later at a hospital and was the third person to be killed within hours in DC that day.
Payne had started classes at the school the week before his death. His father was waiting at the school to pick Kemon up. Kemon’s grandmother, Valerie Payne, told The Post Kemon’s father received a text from Kemon stating that he was on his way to the car near the school’s front entrance, but the 15-year-old never made it.
“We don’t have any answers to what happened,” the teen’s grandmother told The Post in a phone interview before the juvenile court hearing. She described her grandson as “energetic and loving,” and denied the assertions made by the suspected teen’s attorney that Kemon and his friends assaulted him multiple times in the past two years.
The 16-year-old accused in Kemon’s death is charged with second-degree murder while armed and carrying a dangerous weapon. Judge Tyrona T. De Witt denied a request to release the unidentified teen suspect into the custody of his father and ordered him to remain in juvenile detention during court proceedings.
The investigation into where school officials were at the time of the fight remains ongoing.
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