Sunday, July 08, 2007

NY Post Article "NO GLEE FOR PENCIL-STAB CHOIR BOY"

By DENISE BUFFA of the NYPOST July 7, 2007 -- They ain't a bunch of choirboys after all.

A former student at the storied Choir Academy of Harlem says another singer stabbed him in the face with a pencil during a fight at the public school - requiring him to be rushed to the hospital for stitches.

Ten-year-old Elijah Bunche - whose mother has filed suit against the city and its Department of Education for lack of supervision - says the fight broke out in April last year when his substitute teacher stepped out of his fourth-grade class.

"I felt something running down my face. I wiped it off. It was blood," Elijah said.

The family's lawyer, Ronald Ingber, said, "The teacher should've never left the room, left the children unsupervised."

Elijah says he was talking to a friend when the attacker interrupted him.

"Mind your business," he recalls telling the attacker.

The classmate didn't like Elijah's tone, so he got in Elijah's face.

"He started getting upset, and he started talking about my mom . . . I pushed him away from my face."

That's when the other kid started swinging at him, but Elijah didn't realize his attacker was armed with a pencil until he noticed the blood, he said.

The attacker was suspended for the rest of the school year, and Elijah was rushed by ambulance to Montefiore Medical Center.

Ronald D. Ingber, of SILER & INGBER, LLP

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