Four Washington State students and a security guard were stabbed during an incident on Thursday at a high school in Tacoma.
Speaking afterward with local station KCPQ, several Foss High School students described exactly what happened during the 1:35 pm fight.
“So basically, this one guy, he took somebody’s vape pen, and they didn’t like that, so they were going to jump him — or they did, I think,” Foss 9th grader Analayjha told the station. “And he had a knife and he shanked four kids and one adult.”
“It’s ghetto. Why are we stealing from people? And especially, carrying a weapon to school and killing people is crazy, not going to lie,” she continued, adding that she hadn’t witnessed the stabbing herself.
Imonie, another student, revealed that a video of the fight and stabbing were later distributed among students like herself.
“In class, we hear, ‘This is a lockdown,’ and everybody’s like, ‘What is going on?’ And then all of a sudden I see the video AirDropped to my friend’s phone, and we see the whole video happen — the whole fight and stuff — and it was just crazy,” she said.
“It was so bad, there was blood everywhere. And then I heard that, basically, the person who had the knife was — I don’t even know. They said it was some older kid that had already been to jail and stuff, so they came in with a knife. They only fought because over a puff,” she added.
KCPQ notes that four students were critically injured (though their status was later upgraded to stable), whereas the stabber and security guard sustained only minor injuries.
The stabber has since been booked into the Pierce County Jail on five counts of first-degree assault.
Below is reportedly a video of the fight (*Graphic content):
WATCH: New footage shows stabbing that left 6 injured, including 5 students, at Foss High School in Tacoma, Washington pic.twitter.com/pBxmXxEVB8
— Resist Wire (@ResistWire) May 1, 2026
Dianna Corbin, a parent, told local station KIRO that she was shocked by the reason for the stabbing.
“People don’t value life right now, anymore, and according to the kids coming out of the school, who did see it, it was over a vape battery,” she said. “So there’s gonna be potential loss of life just for a vape battery? That seems so idiotic to me.”
All classes were subsequently cancelled for Thursday and Friday.
“Students were safely dismissed at 2:45 p.m,” a Tacoma Public Schools spokesperson told Fox News. “An individual was apprehended and is in police custody.”
“School and after-school activities were canceled for Friday, May 1. School will be open on Monday, May 4. Counselors and additional administrative staff will be on site to support staff and students,” the spokesperson added.
The last time the school made headlines for violence was in 2007, when an 18-year-old student shot and killed classmate Samnang Kok.
The shooter, Douglas Chanthabouly, was later convicted of second-degree murder two years later and sentenced to 23 years in prison. He remains incarcerated at the Monroe Correctional Complex to this day.
“During [his] trial, Chanthabouly’s defense team didn’t deny their client pulled the trigger, but claimed he was mentally ill at the time,” station KOMO reported in 2009. “They said Chanthabouly has a documented history of schizophrenia and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Kirkland in 2005 after attempting suicide.”
“His lawyers said he had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and thought Kok was a member of a street gang out to hurt him and his brother,” the reporting continued.
According to reports, Chanthabouly shot Kok right in the face. Once Kok collapsed, Chanthabouly then stood over him and fired two additional times, hitting the victim in the lower left side and left buttock.
Chanthabouly later tried to appeal his conviction on the basis that he’d been under the delusional belief that he was acting in self-defense when he shot Kok and was therefore “unable to tell right from wrong.”
