NEW YORK (AP)--An eight-year-old boy was charged as a juvenile with criminally negligent homicide Friday in the stabbing death of a four-year-old neighbor in the Bronx.  His friend, a 10-year-old boy, was charged with 2nd-degree assault.  Emanuel Barima was stabbed in the neck Wednesday while playing with his five-year-old sister, Abigail, in the hall outside their family's apartment in the Highbridge neighborhood.  A conflict had developed over the summer between the Barima children and the older boys, and police had questioned them at length.  The medical examiner's office had classified Emanuel's death as a homicide, meaning someone else caused it; police and the district attorney's office then had to determine whether the death was accidental or intentional.  A police source, speaking on condition of anonymity, has told The Associated Press that Emanuel might have been stabbed with a pen.  Abigail said that she saw one of the boys with something green, the source said, but the traumatized child's accounts were inconsistent. Investigators did find a green pen in the hall, but forensic tests on it were inconclusive, the source added.  An autopsy showed that Emanuel died of penetration of the jugular vein due to a stab wound of the neck.  The victim's mother, Elizabeth Ghunney, was babysitting and had sent Emanuel and his sister to throw away a soiled diaper into hallway chute around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday. They played a few minutes, then Emanuel returned to the apartment and collapsed, bleeding from the neck.  "They opened the door, and I heard that they were screaming," Ghunney said Thursday. She called 911 and used a dish towel to try to stop the bleeding.  "I kept on praying and praying and then they told me he wasn't going to make it," said Ghunney. Her little boy died about an hour later.  Thursday was supposed to be the first day of preschool for Emanuel, who said he wanted to be a doctor. The youngest of the family's five boys and one girl, Emanuel was so excited to be going to preschool that he packed his book bag days in advance.  The oldest son, 21, is attending college in their native Ghana. Two other brothers, ages 10 and 15, were among the relatives and neighbors questioned by investigators.  Neighbors set up a small shrine, with candles, flowers, teddy bears and balloons outside the five-story apartment building.  (END) DOW JONES NEWS  09-07-01  01:51 PM- - 01 51 PM EDT 09-07-01

When I was in the first grade, I saw one of my classmates get stabbed by a freshly sharpened pencil. It wasn't an accident. The kid who sat directly behind him thought that it would be funny to put it on his seat as he sat down. Just before he put the pencil on his seat, he whispered to me, "Psst...hey,look!". Well the victim didn't just sit down, he plopped down with all his weight. This brand new pencil plunged halfway into his thigh. He immediately started screaming and rolled to the floor. It looked like he just got shot with an arrow, blood was spurting out and everyone started screaming and crying including the Teacher. I never saw the kid with the pencil again, the stabbing victim came back a month later with a limp and weird black veins in his leg. I guess he got some blood poisoning or something. It just proves that you can't "child proof" the world no matter what you try to legislate.

i saw that same article and had the same exact thoughts.

Sodie, i've been stabbed 3 times with pencils.  all my own fault and not even close to the extreme of the kid in your story.  but in every case there's a bluish-gray "spot" under the skin where the pencil graphite "colored" my cells.  i don't know how, but it did.  something similar in the black veins, maybe?  who knows.

I got stabbed in the knee with a pencil when I was a kid and still have a grey spot where it happened. Must be like getting a tattoo.

Another time at work (when I still had a job, but no more thanks to FDCGHs) one of the idiots there thought it would be funny to take an EXACTO KNIFE and put it in between the section where the back and seat of the chair met so it would point upwards. I never even saw it when I sat down, but I felt the blade go in and stop when it hit my tailbone. When I yanked it out I wasn't bleeding too bad and noticed that the tip of the knife was broken off. Since I didn't have any insurance I never got the wound looked at and still have that piece of metal in my ass till this day.

One time my younger brother stabbed me in the leg with a blue colored pencil. The reason? I ate some of his candy. Thanks to him, I've got this stupid blue mark under my skin. Bastard.