Student Stabbed In Fight Outside Nathan Hale School

SEATTLE - An after-school scuffle among as many as 30 or 35 students and nonstudents outside Nathan Hale High School sent a 19-year-old senior to the hospital yesterday afternoon.

The youth was in stable condition at Harborview Medical Center with a stab wound to the back, said hospital spokesman Larry Zalin.

Police were called by school security at about 2:30 p.m., shortly after classes ended for the day, said police spokeswoman Christie-Lynne Bonner. When police and school security personnel reached the scene, "people fled on foot or in vehicles," she said.

The cause of the fight was unknown, but the Seattle Police Department's gang unit began an investigation, Bonner said.

That doesn't mean it was a gang fight, though, she said. As a matter of routine, the gang unit investigates "whenever younger individuals are involved" in violence around schools, she said.