BPD: Teen 'justified' in stabbing of two other teens in Downtown Buffalo

Two boys were hospitalized after they were stabbed during a fight in Buffalo on Wednesday.

Police said the stabbing happened just before 12:30 p.m. in the area of Main Street and Mohawk Street.

The two victims were taken to Oishei Children's Hospital. One of the boys was reportedly in critical but stable condition. The other victim was expected to be OK.

Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia provided an update on the stabbing on Thursday evening.

According to Gramaglia, the stabbings were ignited by a large fight that involved about 10 teens assaulting one teen. He said the teen who was being assaulted pulled a knife and stabbed the two other teens and called it a self-defense situation.

Gramaglia said the two teens who were stabbed were summer school students, the teen who stabbed them was not a summer school student but was working a summer youth job.

"The two that are stabbed are in summer school," Gramaglia said. "They are Burgard High School students. The information that we received was that they were not in attendance yesterday at summer school. The first week of summer school, we have seen issues already. We've had several fights in several different locations."

According to Gramaglia, he spoke with Buffalo Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Tonja Williams about this and said the district sent out a robocall Wednesday morning, ahead of summer classes urging parents to not allow kids to head downtown.

Commissioner Gramaglia explained, "There are no summer school buildings downtown. None of them are in the downtown core. These kids should not be in the downtown core. They should not be coming downtown. I urge parents that if your kids are in summer school, know where they are, know what time school starts and ensure that your kids are going back home or wherever it is that they are supposed to be when school is out."

Another issue that BPD wants addressed with Buffalo Public Schools as well as the NFTA is bus passes.

Gramaglia said students have too much freedom on the subway and wants to change that to ensure that students are actually going to their summer classes.

We reached out to BPS for comment and have yet to hear back.