Teen Is Fatally Stabbed During Walk With Friend in Waldorf

A Charles County teenager was stabbed to death Wednesday night as he walked with a friend in a Waldorf neighborhood, authorities said yesterday.

Antonio McVicker, 17, left his home about 7 p.m. to go for a walk through the neighborhood with a friend, said his sister, Rosanna McVicker. Later that evening, she said, the friend came bolting back to Antonio's house, saying the teen had been stabbed.

"He never got in a fight before," Rosanna McVicker, 18, said, tears streaming down her face. "It's just unreal. . . . Who would want to stab my brother?"

Police said Antonio McVicker, a junior at McDonough High School, and his friend, also 17, were walking near the 1000 block of Jubilee Way in Waldorf about 9:30 p.m. when they were approached by a man wearing a cloth that partially covered his face. The man stabbed McVicker, in the abdomen, then fled, possibly in a white car, police said.

Detectives have yet to determine a motive for the stabbing or locate a suspect, said Diane Richardson, a spokeswoman for the Charles County Sheriff's Office. Family members say they have doubts about the friend's story, and a source familiar with the investigation said the friend's accounts to police have been slightly inconsistent.

The friend initially told police that the man who approached said something to get McVicker's attention, then stabbed him, authorities said. While McVicker ran forward and collapsed, the friend told investigators, he ran to his own house nearby to call police.

Rosanna McVicker said the friend offered a slightly different account to her in the hospital, where her brother was transported and pronounced dead on arrival. She said the friend told her the suspect emerged from the back seat of a white Lexus and said nothing before the attack, asking only after Antonio had been stabbed, "Was he gang-related?" The friend also said the suspect asked if he himself was "gang-related" before getting back into the Lexus and leaving, Rosanna McVicker said.

Richardson said detectives are re-interviewing all of Antonio McVicker's family members and friends, including the one who was with him, to try to determine what happened. She said police did not have hard evidence to indicate the stabbing was gang-related.

Family members and friends said Antonio McVicker was not a gang member but rather a quiet kid who loved green tea and professional wrestling. He struggled to fit in at school and felt distant from his classmates because he did not have many girlfriends and could not pass his driver's test, his sister said. The friend he was with Wednesday was one of the few people he hung out with, she said, adding that she feared he might be a negative influence.

The homicide is Charles County's second of the year.