Boy, 13, Charged in Stabbing at Playground

Montgomery County police have charged a 13-year-old Gaithersburg boy with stabbing another 13-year-old boy in the stomach with a pocketknife during an argument at a playground Tuesday afternoon.

The victim, while bleeding, got into a fight with another boy before attempting to treat the stab wound and returning home, where he hid the gash from his parents until the evening, police said. His potentially life-threatening injury went untreated for several hours.

The suspect was charged Wednesday with attempted second-degree murder and carrying a weapon openly with intent to injure, said Lucille Baur, a police spokeswoman. He was taken to the Alfred D. Noyes Children's Center in Rockville. Police did not release the boys' names because they are juveniles.

Investigators found no sign of gang involvement and described the stabbing as a more or less spontaneous act: "Just young men with free time, and one of them with a pocketknife, and he's just sort of showing it around, and they started arguing with each other," Baur said. "And then, as sometimes happens with teenage boys, they started fighting."

Police said the two youths involved in the stabbing are schoolmates -- authorities declined to say which school they attend -- but are not friends.

The playground, in a complex of attached homes on Benji Court in the Newport Estates community near downtown Gaithersburg, has a swing set with a broken swing, a basketball goal with no basket and a storage shed covered in graffiti.

A few boys and girls were gathered there yesterday afternoon. Some said they had heard about the fight but did not know details.

Police gave this account of the stabbing:

The victim was playing with a group of teenagers at the playground about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, a day Montgomery schools were closed. The assailant was toying with a three-inch folding knife.

The boys got into an argument that escalated into a fight. The victim fought again before tending to his wound.

"For whatever reason, he's not aware of the severity of the wound, and I guess the adrenaline is going," Baur said.

Later, at home, the victim's mother sensed something was wrong and took him to a hospital, Baur said. He was later flown to another hospital, where he remained.