East Side Stories

An 18-year-old student who attends either a high school or college, depending on which paper you're reading, was stabbed yesterday morning on Manhattan's East Side. The motive for the attack is uncertain, but people are willing to speculate. In the Daily News (identifying the victim, Alton McCarthy, as a college freshman), McCarthy's mother paints a picture of her son cutting through Central Park to catch a train home, when he is set upon by a gang of Bloods, who stab him repeatedly in a vicious initiation ritual. She bemoans the fact that no one came to her son's rescue in the crowded daytime park.

The New York Post identifies Alton McCarthy as a high school student and reveals that he was stabbed in the back during a scuffle over a prom date, but doesn't provide any information to substantiate that assertion and says that his 17-year-old girlfriend doesn't know anything about what happened. WNBC says that the people who attacked McCarthy were known by the victim. ABC goes a step further and claims that the person who stabbed McCarthy in the back was a friend of his. As for the unresponsive crowd who wouldn't come to McCarthy's aid, the attack allegedly was witnessed by a number of people who knew the victim, but they all ran away.

At least what is known is the time and place of the stabbing––sort of. It did happen yesterday in Manhattan. The Post says that it occurred in front of a Central Park playground near the park's entrance at 10:30 a.m. ABC reports that police are saying the attack did occur inside the park, but places the time as "just before noon". The Daily News pegs the incident at noon and writes that it occurred near the park. WNBC says the McCarthy was stabbed "Friday afternoon" and locates the scene of the crime as a street corner at 67th St. and 5th Ave. "just blocks away from the Central Park Zoo and Temple Emanu-El." Obviously, the story is still "developing."

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By Dave Hogarty in News on May 5, 2007 2:40 PM

Comments [rss]

matukonyc

I don't think if I were stabbed, I'd like to have what happened considered analogous to a Broadway musical. It's flippant and were you that boy's parents, how would you feel about it?

"Literary license?" You can't even spell "privilege" correctly.

DaveH

Point taken Adriana, but when presented with a story whose mentioned components include NYC, gangs, young love, betrayal by friends, a stabbing, and an East Side location, and the fact that my post is about multiple versions of a reported event, NOT coming up with the title I did would probably have resulted in the revocation of my literary license and the privelege of using it.

Adriana

Might the previous poster ("a") be referring to the use of a screen shot from West Side Story, and the allusion to the movie in the post title?

DaveH

Actually, there's not a single disparaging statement about victim Alton McCarthy in our post and we regret if anyone is confused on that point. In fact, we were just contacted by a reader, Karen, who located and directed us to a periodical from four years ago that leads us to believe that Alton is on the verge of graduating from Manhattan/Hunter Science High School and at least four years ago was interested in pursuing a medical degree. We write "is" because he is not a murder victim. If the reports we've read can be trusted, he is currently recovering from his wounds in a New York hospital. There's nothing in our post that communicates Alton McCarthy was killed.

That brings us to the crux of someone's misunderstanding. If the post above can be interpreted as disparaging (and we hope it is), it is of the almost comical inability of major media outlets in the so-called media capital of the world to relay an accurate account of a fairly straightforward episode: a young man stabbed in broad daylight on a crowded street or in a well-used park with dozens of people nearby. If in doing that we came across as clever, well, thank you very much.