Your pal’s dead
Teen wakes from coma to sad news over school knifing
BRONX SCHOOL stabbing victim Ariane Laboy, after two days in a coma, awoke wanting two things: an egg roll and some good news about his best friend.
“That’s when his dad said, ‘Son, your friend is dead,’ ” family friend Jonathan Wilson recounted Saturday. “(Ariane) didn’t want to talk to anybody anymore. Everybody had to leave the hospital.”
The 16-year-old Ariane, stabbed in the chest Wednesday by an oft-bullied bisexual classmate, remained in a coma until Friday.
Wilson was there when Ariane’s dad emerged from his room at St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx after breaking the news to his son.
“He woke up and they got him some Chinese food,” recalled Wilson, 24. “He said, ‘I’m not hungry. I want the egg roll. Can I give the rest of this to Matthew?’ ”
His friend Matthew McCree, 15, was mortally wounded in the classroom stabbing spree at the Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation.
Ariane was knifed and gashed when he jumped to the aid of a badly bleeding Matthew, who died a short time later — the first New York City school killing since 1993.
Their classmate Abel Cedeno, 18, a fifth-year senior, stabbed both youths with a switchblade as their terrified classmates and teachers watched helplessly.
Cedeno remained jailed Saturday on Rikers Island, held on a murder charge in the attack. A judge ordered the teen suspect placed on a suicide watch, too.
Cedeno said his sexuality made him a target for anti-gay venom and occasional physical abuse, although cops said his homicidal rage was directed at the wrong two teens.
Though Ariane and Matthew reportedly tossed broken pencil shards and wads of paper at Cedeno before the stabbings, cops said the pair had no previous bullying interactions with him.
Matthew’s family has yet to make funeral arrangements for their son, and his teary mom defended Matthew against allegations of bullying.
“My son was no bully,” said his mother Louna Dennis, 34. “He was a wonderful child and got along with everybody.”
Friends of the slain boy were outraged by Cedeno’s jailhouse interview where he insisted the knife was meant only to scare off his tormentors.
“Come on, you brought a knife to a fistfight,” said neighbor Krissy Guevera, 25. “What did you think was going to happen? It just went entirely too far.
“It should’ve never happened. It could have been avoided, but it wasn’t.”
Cedeno is due back in Bronx Criminal Court on Tuesday, and was expected to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
The aspiring actor said he was in a daze after the bloodshed, unsure as he walked into the principal’s office whether the incident was even real.
Cedeno — who identifies as bisexual — said classmates targeted him for vitriol because he was different.
Some kids called him a “f----t,” he said, and recounted how other students bounced him off hallway lockers.
The mayor’s office and the City Council plan Monday hearings to investigate bullying issues in New York schools.