Melissa Seddon got the text from her son at 8:41 a.m.

“He said, ‘Someone got stabbed,’ and my heart just dropped — it’s rough because this is my baby,” said Seddon, a mother of three, as she paced Wednesday morning in the rain, poring over her cellphone for answers outside Pittsburgh’s Carrick High School.

The news raced from phone to phone in spurts as parents huddled at 9 a.m. near the corner of the 500-student school’s Parkfield Street property in the city’s Carrick section.

At 8:30 a.m., less than an hour into the school day, a 16-year-old student, Anthony Taulton, stabbed two other students in the abdomen and wounded a third during a violent scuffle in the school’s front hallway, authorities said.

Two teens, one critically injured, were hospitalized. Police took Taulton in for questioning.

This was all new for Seddon.

Her son Dominic, 15, attended Central Catholic High School for his freshman year. He had been a sophomore at Carrick High School for less than a month.

“My son came from a private school. This didn’t happen there,” said Seddon, of Pittsburgh’s Arlington neighborhood. “My stomach hurts. It’s terrible, the knot in my stomach.”

Seddon, whose son was not part of the attack, was not alone. More than 20 parents rushed to the school early Wednesday, hoping to pull their children from the chaos. Officials released some students to relatives before noon.

With students in lockdown, parents hid under umbrellas or hoodies outside the brick-faced school as they struggled to make sense of sparse details floating through social media. Many, unprepared, ran to the school wearing pajama pants.

Isabella Gaito was in no mood to wait. The 21-year-old Carrick woman stormed to the school to pick up her younger sister — sophomore Lily, 15 — who was locked inside.

Nobody had told Lily or her classmates what was happening, Gaito said. Teachers simply ordered them to stay off their phones.

“I am very (ticked) off that the Pittsburgh Public Schools system has failed these children,” said Gaito, soaked by the morning rain . “Make sure those metal detectors work! Make sure those security guards work!”

Gaito punctuated several sentences with expletives as she sought information from reporters on the scene.

“All of us this could be prevented if they gave a (expletive) about our kids,” she said. Lily “is scared. She’s completely terrified. … She wasn’t stabbed. That’s what I can be thankful for. And that’s sad.”

Incident details

The attack occurred just inside the front doors of the building at 125 Parkfield St., a five-acre lot in a residential area.

An 18-year-old victim remained in “critical, but stable” condition Wednesday night at UPMC Mercy hospital, while another was in stable condition at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, schools spokeswoman Ebony Pugh told TribLive.

The third victim had a “minor laceration” and was treated at the scene and released, Pugh said.

Taulton had a cut on his hand. He was treated by medics at the scene. All four students are boys between 15 and 18.

Pittsburgh police have charged Taulton with three counts of felony aggravated assault and misdemeanor counts of possession of weapons on school property and possession instruments of a crime.

Online court documents indicate Taulton was denied bail and is in the Allegheny County Jail awaiting a preliminary hearing Oct 1 at Pittsburgh Municipal Court.

The Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office, the agency that guides police on filing criminal charges, declined to comment Wednesday.

Authorities were working from initial reports that suggested the three victims had ganged up on one student, later identified as Taulton, who fought back with a knife. A photo of a kitchen-style knife allegedly used in the attack, its blade broken in half, circulated among those gathered at the school.

The alleged assailant is a new student at Carrick High School and the district, according to Pittsburgh Public Schools police Chief Dena Young. The boy’s mother had spoken with school officials Wednesday morning — just prior to the attack — about tension between her son and other students, Pugh said.

Young said the student arrived late Wednesday, entering through the school’s cafeteria entrance.

Officials confirmed the suspect passed through one of the facility’s metal detectors, which Young described as “old but sufficient.”

According to the criminal complaint, Taulton said he was in a group chat via Instagram with people threatening him about three weeks prior to the incident.

He told his mother he did not want go to school fearing an altercation and grabbed a kitchen knife before leaving, the complaint said.

Taulton told police he grabbed a kitchen knife from the counter of his Carrick home before leaving for school Wednesday morning, according to the complaint. He told police he wrapped the knife inside a hat, which he then placed in his bookbag.

When he walked through the metal detectors at the school, he handed the bag to a guard, the complaint continues. Taulton told police his bag was checked but the knife was not discovered.

Once inside the school, he took the knife from his bookbag and placed it in the front of his hoodie pocket, the complaint said.

Taulton said he was walking down a hallway and observed the people from the group chat. An argument began and turned physical with Taulton admitting to stabbing the three students, the complaint read.

A kitchen knife with a broken blade was recovered at the school, according to the complaint.

Pittsburgh police spoke with one of the victims at UPMC Mercy.

That student told police he was going to class when he saw his friend being jumped. The victim joined in to save his friend and later noticed he himself was bleeding, the complaint read.

Police said the student at UPMC Mercy had part of blade lodged in his left elbow.

Officers interviewed a victim at UPMC Children’s Hospital, who told them they were walking in a hallway when they noticed “a man” staring at him from a distance. The victim said the person took off his bag, which he believed was an indication the person wanted to fight, according to the complaint.

The victim confronted the person about why he dropped his bag and said the man (Taulton) threw a punch at him, which he was able to avoid, according to the complaint.

The victim then threw a punch and was struck in the right side, which he later realized was a stab wound, authorities say.

A third victim was interviewed with his mother present at Pittsburgh police headquarters.

The victim said he was walking to class when two people began fighting in front of him. The boy said the two were moving toward him and he began throwing punches to keep the two at bay and others began throwing punches as well, according to the complaint.

Police said they observed the third victim had a cut to his right elbow, bruising near his right eye and a cut to his left hand middle finger.

Video footage shows Taulton engaged in a fight with the first victim and a teacher attempting to break them up, the complaint read.

Video of incident surfaces

Mark Sheehan, 16, said he was in gym class when word came over the intercom that the school was “on hold.”

Within minutes, students started sharing a 13-second cellphone clip that showed part of the fight. Cara Cruz, a Pittsburgh police spokeswoman, viewed the footage and told TribLive it appears to be authentic.

In the video, at least three teens threw punches as they violently flung each other between doorways in a crowded school hall. One student — wearing a black hoodie, his face not visible — dragged a teen by his clothing across the floor.

A second student, wearing a gray hoodie, then punched the boy on the ground repeatedly in the head. The boy on the ground unsuccessfully tried to block the blows with his arms.

Two school staffers repeatedly tried to pry apart the teens, the video showed. At one point, an employee bent over to pick up an object from the floor.

“It was just nuts in there,” Mark told TribLive. “People were just annoyed. They were all just scared.”

District Superintendent Wayne N. Walters credited Carrick staff for helping keep students calm in a chaotic situation. He described the students as showing “resilience.”

“We are deeply concerned for the students who were injured today, and our thoughts are with them and their families,” Walters said.

The school moved to remote learning Thursday and Friday.

“I want you to know that what took place today does not define who you are or what you deserve,” Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey told students in a statement. “You deserve to feel safe. You deserve to be seen and heard. And you deserve the chance to grow, to learn and to simply be young without the weight of fear.”

Volunteers with the South Pittsburgh Coalition for Peace, a grassroots anti-violence group formed following a Carrick High School student’s shooting death in 2005, worked to comfort anxious parents.

“Right now, they’re cleaning up,” one volunteer, who declined to give his name, told a group of parents about 9:30 a.m. “There’s a blood spill, and they don’t want the kids to see that.”

Rev. Eileen Smith, the coalition’s executive director, said her group interacts with students inside the school up to four days each week.

“And they will continue to do the same mentoring,” Smith told TribLive on Wednesday afternoon. “They’re already getting in front of this … just to make sure it doesn’t lead to more gun violence.”

Some warned that the violence at the school did not start Wednesday morning.

Neither Cruz, the Pittsburgh police spokeswoman, nor Pittsburgh Councilman Anthony Coghill, D-Beechview, whose district includes the high school, could confirm what parents described as a violent incident last week at the school.

But Young, the school police chief, said officers responded to Carrick High School on Friday for a “totally separate” incident involving a teen who “threatened he would shoot up the school.”

Young had no information on potential discipline involving any of the students involved in Wednesday’s fight.

“We’re looking at how the weapon got in,” Young told reporters. “But we also want to make sure these kids are OK.”

Nearby, moments earlier, Gaito found her younger sister, and wrapped her arms around the teen as the pair walked slowly down a school ramp.

Then, Lily, wordless and weeping, fell into her sister’s arms.

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)