Lawyer: Angry father may have stabbed wrong boy

HOUSTON (AP) — The distraught father accused of stabbing a boy he believed was a witness to a sexual assault on his daughter may have attacked the wrong person, the boy’s attorney said Tuesday.

The 17-year-old high school junior spent the weekend with his parents and did not attend the party where the sexual assault reportedly took place, attorney Fernando Valdes said.

The boy was stabbed three times Monday at Wunsche High School and remained hospitalized Tuesday in good condition.

“He was not at any party at all,” Valdes said. “This kid was student of the month last month. He’s not some thug that runs around gang banging. He hangs around computer guys. He’s a techie, a good guy getting a bad rap.”

Harris County Sheriff’s Sgt. Kenneth O. Thomas said investigators hadn’t yet confirmed whether the boy was at the party.

“This was an unwarranted act of vigilantism,” said Valdes, who said the boy knows the girl but had never before seen her father.

The man went to the school Monday with his 17-year-old daughter and wife to report the sexual assault to school administrators.

Valdes said the man spotted the boy in the school lobby, called out to him and lunged at him from behind, stabbing the boy in the chest, one hand and the abdomen.

The teenager knocked the knife out of his attacker’s hand before school police subdued the man.