Teen who stabbed classmate says he ‘snapped’ over being bullied

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The Bronx teenager who fatally stabbed a classmate in the classroom said that he “snapped” after he was being bullied and only meant to scare the other teen.

“I guess I just snapped,” Abel Cedeno told the New York Daily News in an interview from Rikers Island. “I didn’t mean to kill him.”

“They bully me because I’m different,” he explained. “I’m not like the other guys. My voice is higher.”

Cedeno’s friends claimed that he had been the target of bullying based on his ethnicity as well as accusations that he was gay. They said he had been bullied since school began three weeks ago.

Cedeno is currently being held without bail and is on suicide watch after stabbing Matthew McRee, 15, and Ariane Laboy, 16, during a history class at the Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation. He said that because of the bullying, he had purchased a switchblade two weeks prior to the stabbing “to protect myself.”

However, police said that neither of the two boys who were stabbed on Wednesday had any history with Cedeno.