At least five people were injured Thursday afternoon after a stabbing at Foss High School in Tacoma, Washington, prompting a lockdown and a police response that ended with one suspect detained. Officers were called to what police described as a possible stabbing tied to a fight.
Police said they found four students and a security guard hurt at the school, and all five were taken to a local hospital. Tacoma Fire Department said there were five patients and four were in serious condition, while police said the scene was secure and one suspect was in custody.
The injuries happened on a campus that quickly shut down as officers worked with Tacoma Public Schools officials to clear the building and reunite students with parents in the student parking lot area. Authorities said they did not yet know whether every victim had been stabbed or whether some were hurt another way, such as falling, and they had not determined what weapon was used or exactly where inside the school the confrontation began.
The scene inside Foss High School remained murky in the immediate aftermath, even as students described a fast-moving fight that spilled into a wider emergency. One student said a dispute over a vape pen appeared to set off the violence, while another said people in class suddenly heard a lockdown announcement and then watched video of the fight spread by airdrop, with blood on the floor and confusion over who had brought the knife.
For Tacoma, the immediate question is no longer whether the campus was safe to reopen that afternoon — police said it was secure — but how a fight inside the school escalated into a stabbing that left four students and a security guard hurt. With one suspect detained and investigators still trying to sort out the weapon, the path from a classroom dispute to five hospital patients is now the center of the case.