Seven youths assaulted senior Tim Mullen outside the front doors of Stuyvesant on Wednesday, October 3. The attack occurred between 4:15 and 4:30 p.m.
Mullen was walking alone to Nelson A. Rockefeller Park after school when seven black youths, who had been loitering outside Stuyvesant, hit him from behind for no apparent reason. No words were exchanged between the attackers and Mullen, and they stole nothing from him.
The assailants fled the scene after leaving Mullen bloody on the ground. “When I opened my eyes, I was bleeding from my mouth,” Mullen said.
“There were lacerations in my mouth. […] I was in pain. The sides of my face hurt, which I later learned were fractures.” His jaw was broken in two places and had to be wired shut.
Junior Lee Schleifer-Katz witnessed the incident. Schleifer-Katz and other witnesses, two other students and a woman, helped Mullen inside the school and into Principal Stanley Teitel’s office, where police and an Emergency Medical Technician arrived shortly after.
“I don’t think anybody really could have done much” to have intervened, said Schleifer-Katz, citing the difference in numbers of the assailants and the few witnesses.
The police filed a report based on Mullen’s responses to their questions and written statements of the witnesses.
The police later called Schleifer-Katz’s home and asked if he could identify any of the assailants in a police lineup, which he said he would not be able to do because he had not seen their faces. He said they appeared to be high school students. One of them was wearing a white tank top. Another had on a red cap.
“I hope this doesn’t happen around Stuy or anywhere ever again,” said Schleifer-Katz, “so [students] can feel safe walking up to and back from the park.”
Teitel said he has not implemented any extra security measures in or around Stuyvesant in response to this event, but he has spoken with the New York City Police Department to help look out for students on their way home.
“I have asked the police to provide a ‘safe’corridor each afternoon from 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. along Chambers Street,” he wrote to the Parents’ Association in an e-mail two days after the assault.
Some students said this preventative measure would be ineffective, because “many of the kids leave at six or seven,” senior Larry Chan said.
Schleifer-Katz was also unsure of the effectiveness of increasing police presence, but said, “If security just kept a more watchful eye, I think it would definitely help.”
“I’d like to urge you to talk with your children and ask them to pay close attention to their surroundings,” Teitel wrote in the e-mail, “even when they are just traveling to and from the subway station.”
Teitel recommended students be vigilant and not travel alone. “It’s really up to you guys to be aware of what’s going on around you,” he said. “Once you leave the building I can’t really protect you.”
Freshman Brian Kim usually goes home with his friends. “I feel safer if I’m in a group,” he said.
Parents’ Association President Paola de Kock said students should not assume that the neighborhood around Stuyvesant is completely free from danger. “People just assume that it’s Chambers Street and right in front of the school that it’s 100 percent safe,” she said. “The thing that kids and parents need to focus on is to really be aware of the things around them.”
Mullen said the administration handled the situation to the best of its ability. “There was little else that [it] could do,” he said.