INDIANAPOLIS — A former North Central High School student accused of stabbing another student inside the school has been found guilty on all counts.
Wyatt Maxey was found guilty of attempted murder, aggravated assault and possession of a knife on school grounds on Wednesday, Sept. 6 after a two-day trial. His sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 16 at 1 p.m.
The stabbing took place in a hallway at the start of the school day almost exactly two years ago. In the courtroom Tuesday, we saw the video of the incident for the first time.
In the recording, two senior students are seen running into the building and down the hallway after apparently having a fist fight earlier outside the school. Wyatt Maxey, who was 18 at the time, is in a track suit chasing the other boy with a knife.
Maxey stabbed the boy in the heart and the brain, the prosecutor said. He suffered significant injuries. The victim has since recovered.
Neither side is disputing what happened in this incident. The state has charged Maxey with attempted murder.
"School is a place to learn. But for the defendant, it's a place where he chased his victim down with a knife, stabbing him multiple times. And it was caught on school surveillance video," said Joe Cermak, a Marion County deputy prosecutor.
"We are not going to ask you to believe that somehow Wyatt was justified or that it was OK to stab this other young man," Maxey's attorney Bobbie Lynn Sierzputowski told the jury. "But what we are going to ask you to agree with us about is Wyatt had zero intention to kill Brandon."
On Tuesday, we heard testimony from a teacher who still works at North Central High School who was the first to encounter the boys and tried to intervene. He called it the worst day in his 25 years of teaching.
"They were with great violence. Like this or like this, I don't know, but it was over and over again to the point that I couldn't get between them, and I couldn't get him off of him because I knew I couldn't get between them without ... well, my feeling was I couldn't get between them without getting stabbed," said Gregory Lineweaver, chair of the English department at North Central. "It was unlike anything I have ever witnessed, ever."