There’s Now Video of the Fight That Led a Queer Student to Stab His Homophobic Bully

Abel Cedeno, the gay or bisexual 18-year-old Bronx student who fatally stabbed 15-year-old classmate Matthew McCree, is currently on trial in New York City for manslaughter. And a new video (below) showing the fistfight that preceded the stabbing was recently released by the Bronx County District Attorney. Lawyers say the Abel Cedeno video proves he stabbed McCree in self-defense, but an opposing lawyer says that it just shows a classmate trying to stop Cedeno’s alleged stabbing spree.

Cedeno claims that McCree and 16-year-old Ariane Laboy — McCree’s surviving friend who Cedeno also slashed — had long tormented him with homophobic taunts, racist slurs and physical violence, all with no intervention from school faculty.

Police say that at the time of the attack, McCree and Laboy had been throwing bits of broken pencil at the back of Cedeno’s head. When Cedeno rose to leave the classroom and angrily asked, “Who is throwing all that stuff at me?” McCree allegedly confronted him, saying, “Hey, it was me. What’s good?” (Slang for, “What are you going to do about it?”)

Cedeno said that he pulled out his knife to discourage McCree from attacking him, but McCree allegedly hit Cedeno in the face twice and Cedeno slashed out. Cedeno says he didn’t even realized that he’d killed McCree or slashed Laboy until school security forces started dragging him away.

In the video Cedeno is wearing a pink shirt. The video is bloodless and only nine seconds long.

Here’s the Abel Cedeno video:

 

 

According to Cedeno’s lawyers, the Bronx County District Attorney’s office only recently handed over the video, and they question why they’ve released it now considering that prosecutors have owned it for months. They say that the tape proves that Cedeno acted in self-defense and that the District Attorney should dismiss the case if she’s “at the least, gay friendly.”

But Laboy’s lawyer says that the video shows nothing more than “the hero, an unarmed Ariane Laboy bravely trying to stop the cold-blooded killer from plunging a knife into his unarmed defenseless friend,” adding, “if Ariane did not step in, there would have been other victims.”

 

Featured image via Pix11