# White teen fatally stabbed by black teen at track meet; racists come out of the woodwork **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 3, 2025, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593 "2025-04-03T23:37:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593/41 "2025-04-11T12:48:17Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > I can quite easily imagine a feeling of entrapment in such a situation if I’m feeling threatened by the person asking me to leave and my “fight or flight” instinct kicks in. Really, use your imagination _Even_ if we grant that he might have been feeling threatened, why the fuck did he have a knife in his backpack at a track meet? ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593/42 "2025-04-11T12:50:54Z")
Yes, it’s Texas, he shoulda had a gun. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593/43 "2025-04-11T13:00:30Z")
[![](https://media1.giphy.com/media/l3q2K5jinAlChoCLS/giphy.gif?cid=6c09b95257sfd34ya9obm2qv3i4fs9docuvej0rlgoq3pgrn&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g) ](https://media1.giphy.com/media/l3q2K5jinAlChoCLS/giphy.gif?cid=6c09b95257sfd34ya9obm2qv3i4fs9docuvej0rlgoq3pgrn&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g) ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593/44 "2025-04-11T13:05:40Z")
For the same reason one would feel the need to carry a gun everywhere they go, I presume? Few seem to question that. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593/45 "2025-04-11T13:07:23Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > For the same reason one would feel the need to carry a gun everywhere they go, I presume? Few seem to question that ??? What the fuck? No, it is not OK to bring a gun to a track meet??? Are you serious? What do you mean, _few would question that_? ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593/46 "2025-04-11T13:09:06Z")
Maybe “too few.” ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593/47 "2025-04-11T13:10:03Z")
I know Texans are pretty whackadoodledoo, but a thirty second Google search reveals that even they ban guns at school, on school grounds, or at facilities used for school athletics events: > [@](#): > > Subject to the exceptions described below, Texas law generally prohibits people from intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly possessing or “going with” a firearm on the premises of a school or postsecondary educational institution, including both public and private K-12 schools and a postsecondary educational institution (which are public and private institutions of higher education such as colleges and universities), unless pursuant to written regulations or written authorization from that school or institution.[1- endnote](https://giffords.org/lawcenter/state-laws/guns-in-schools-in-texas/#footnote_0_16163) This restriction also generally applies to the grounds or building owned by and under the control of a school or postsecondary educational institution where an activity sponsored by a school or educational institution is being conducted, or in a school or educational institution’s passenger transportation vehicle (such as a school bus), unless pursuant to written regulations or written authorization from the institution.[2- endnote](https://giffords.org/lawcenter/state-laws/guns-in-schools-in-texas/#footnote_1_16163) State law also generally prohibits people from carrying firearms on premises where a high school or collegiate sporting event or interscholastic event is taking place (unless the person is a participant in an event requiring use of firearms).[3](https://giffords.org/lawcenter/state-laws/guns-in-schools-in-texas/#footnote_2_16163) ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593/48 "2025-04-11T13:17:10Z")
The point is “self-defence” or protection. I knew kids in high school that would carry knives. Yes, they were primarily gang members, but not all of them. They felt they needed them in case there was trouble on the way to or from school. So my guess is that this is why this kid would have one on him. I didn’t say it makes it right, but it’s pretty clear to my why one would have a knife on them, and it’s not necessarily because they aimed to provoke (though that may still be a possibility here.) ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593/49 "2025-04-11T13:22:08Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > The point is “self-defence” or protection. Well, that worked out real well for him - on the one end, it let him be a big man and stand up to the guy who told him to leave the tent - on the other hand, it’ll earn him a few good years in prison. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593/50 "2025-04-11T13:22:26Z")
There are tons of nonviolent reasons to carry a knife. It’s just plain a useful tool. All of the reasons for carrying a gun, however, come back to violence in some way or another. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593/51 "2025-04-11T13:24:20Z")
Probably. But that’s how these things often end. I’m still curious to see whether this ends up being as straightforward as it seems on first accout. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593/52 "2025-04-11T13:47:12Z")
However, he also wasn’t beaten to death by the other school’s gaggle of students / gathering mob. We don’t know it wouldn’t have escalated to that. > [@Chronos](#): > > There are tons of nonviolent reasons to carry a knife. It’s just plain a useful tool. Agreed. However the sorts of knives that make good tools and the sort that make good weapons have little overlap. I don’t know enough about the case to say which sort the kid was carrying. To @Babale’s larger points … It would be darn nice if our society had far fewer people who go about their daily business armed. Because that does have the statistical effect of escalating some number of minor altercations into major ones. But in a violent and paranoid society we’re going to have those people. And as long as there are predatory people, there will be a corresponding and quite reasonable demand for many of the would-be victims to be armed. I rather doubt the kid brought that knife especially to the track meet. Far more likely he brought it with him everywhere. Because in his world, somebody being attacked by an armed guy, or even unarmed groups of guys, was a regular predictable occurrence. And one he hoped to survive if / when it happened to him. ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593/53 "2025-04-11T14:13:42Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > I’m still curious to see whether this ends up being as straightforward as it seems on first accout. I agree that we don’t have the full story yet, but based on what we do have it seems pretty clear… I don’t buy the self-defense argument at all. Although, to be fair, I rarely do when it comes to escalating a hand-to-hand encounter to one with a weapon. While it’s possible to be killed in a beat-down, that seems extremely unlikely at a public event - security would obviously break up any altercation before it go to that point. When somebody tells you to leave, and then keeps harassing you to leave, and then physically assaults you to make you leave, the right thing to do is leave. If you feel like you have a right to be there, find somebody (security, police) to enforce that right. Enforcing it yourself with a weapon is both stupid and wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593/54 "2025-04-11T15:07:23Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Agreed. However the sorts of knives that make good tools and the sort that make good weapons have little overlap. I don’t know enough about the case to say which sort the kid was carrying. Depends on what you mean by “a good weapon”. I wouldn’t want to have to defend myself with nothing but my pocketknife… but I also wouldn’t want to face an attacker who had one, either. A scared kid pulling a pocketknife, with the result that someone dies, isn’t an implausible situation. > [@Jas09](#): > > Enforcing it yourself with a weapon is both stupid and wrong. No question, but teenagers often do things that are stupid and wrong. We adults try to shape the world such that, when they do, they live to learn the lesson. It doesn’t always work. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593/55 "2025-04-11T15:19:40Z")
> [@Jas09](#): > > When somebody tells you to leave, and then keeps harassing you to leave, and then physically assaults you to make you leave, the right thing to do is leave. I was with you up until the final part. If they physically assault you, you have every right to fight back. Maybe not stab them, but I would not say it’s wrong to deal with the situation physically if you are capable of doing so. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593/56 "2025-04-11T15:22:14Z")
> [@Jas09](#): > > When somebody tells you to leave, and then keeps harassing you to leave, and then physically assaults you to make you leave, the right thing to do is leave. If they’ve moved on to physically assaulting you, I’m fine with you acting in self-defense. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593/57 "2025-04-11T16:08:54Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > can quite easily imagine a feeling of entrapment in such a situation if I’m feeling threatened by the person asking me to leave and my “fight or flight” instinct kicks in. That’s bullshit. The story says he was repeatedly asked to leave and it escalated over time to a physical confrontation. There is no “entrapment” about that. I’m not saying that the fault lies 100% on the part of the kid who pulled out the knife because as others have said we don’t have the whole story. But unless the kid was trying to leave and wasn’t able to there is no “feeling of trapped”. That’s an idiotic argument. When you feel trapped, you try to leave and try to fight back when you can’t. Unless what is being reported is a total lie, rather than just being incomplete, this is a load of crap to argue. ---
**Author:** ![Airbeck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/airbeck/32/6574_2.png) [@Airbeck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airbeck)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593/58 "2025-04-11T17:36:24Z")
There is the literal definition of trapped, and the figurative use. You are stuck on trapped in a physical sense, but people also feel trapped in bad situations, as in dealing with this kind of intimidation/bullying on a regular basis. When you go to school with someone that makes you feel that way, you can certainly feel trapped in that situation. What (non-fatal) incidents happened prior to this? Was there a pattern of this kid being told he wasn’t welcome wherever he happened to be? Could this have been a straw that broke the camel’s back situation? Could a pattern of this be a reason he felt like he needed a knife to defend himself? The answers to all of these questions are “we don’t know”. It really raises eyebrow for me when people are already 100% convinced of not only what happened, but what the results of the trial should be. I’m not speaking to you specifically on that last point, but to those in this thread that seem to want to swing the axe. ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593/59 "2025-04-11T17:44:49Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > I was with you up until the final part. > [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > If they’ve moved on to physically assaulting you, I’m fine with you acting in self-defense. Yeah, I admit that is probably the more common position. I just believe a bit more in avoiding violence wherever possible. Until you get to the point where removing yourself from the situation isn’t plausible without increased risk to you or someone else, I prefer the policy of “no be there”. I especially dislike the very common (among young men in particular) idea that if someone escalates the situation (by pushing or whatever) that it is somehow “unmanly” if you don’t rise to that level of violence (or perhaps go even higher). There is nothing unmanly about de-escalating a situation by removing yourself from it. And it could even save your life, or someone else’s. I’m not accusing either of you of that idea, of course. It does seem like it was part of whatever encounter happened between these two. I promise you, if someone I don’t know reaches into an unknown bag while saying “push me one more time” there is no “man code” in the world that would compel me to press my luck by staying engaged with that person. On the idea of “feeling trapped”, it seems to me that at least in a figurative sense both of these men were trapped in a situation where backing down felt impossible. And now one of them is dead and the other will likely end up in prison for a long time (barring currently unknown evidence). ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2025, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593/60 "2025-04-11T18:08:19Z")
> [@Jas09](#): > > When somebody tells you to leave, and then keeps harassing you to leave, and then physically assaults you to make you leave, the right thing to do is leave. Very true, but not very Texan. The Ground Zero of “stand your ground” laws would probably not be having so much public outcry about this case if the races of the stabber and the guy who initially assaulted him had been reversed. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/white-teen-fatally-stabbed-by-black-teen-at-track-meet-racists-come-out-of-the-woodwork/1016593.md?page=4)