West High School student reacts to stabbing

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) – “I feel like people talk about things like this, but I don't think something like this would ever happen,” said Crosby Taylor, a 12th grader at Iowa West High School.

Taylor, like many other students and parents, has just learned of a stabbing that took place on August 23rd.

A criminal complaint said three teenagers were charged with aggravated burglary. The documents listed 17-year-old Tion Exum-Carson and 16-year-old Nathaniel Washington, and the Cedar Rapids Gazette said the third person involved was 16-year-old Moayed Elside. All three were not students at West High School. We don't usually name minors in criminal cases unless the charges are high enough, in which case they are all charged with a Class B felony and face up to 25 years in prison.

“I guess it seems kind of foreign to me, and that something similar happened at West High is just a shock,” Taylor said.

According to police, the three teenagers “had no right to be in the building,” and at least two of them left the building indefinitely in 2022. What really bothered Taylor was the fact that this information was only made public now.

“There is no denying that our school is potentially unsafe and people don’t know about it,” Taylor said.

The Iowa City School District and police have not yet disclosed how the minors were able to get into the school after school hours. Taylor said he just wants to know how the district plans to prevent this from happening in the future.

“What measures are being taken to ensure this does not happen again,” he said.

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