By George P. Hassett

A 14-year-old boy was stabbed walking home from class at the Winter Hill Community School on Tuesday, the knife missing his lung by inches, according to the boy’s father.

Two weeks before the incident the boy found a threatening note on his desk at school that said, "I’ll kill you" and was signed "MS-13," the father said. School officials and a police officer assigned to the building were alerted to the threat but, according to the father, did little to prevent it.

"I told them he was afraid to come to school. [Police and the school principal] said he was safe, well he wasn’t safe on Tuesday," he said.

The suspect, wearing a ski mask that covered the bottom half of his face, stabbed the boy at the corner of Sycamore and Medford streets as students were leaving school for the day, he said. The boy ran back into the school and got help, he said. He was treated and released from the hospital the same day.

The father, who asked that his name not be used, said his son has recovered physically but still fears retaliation. He said police arrested one boy in connection with the stabbing, interrupting a class on Friday at the school to bring him out in handcuffs. It is unclear if the stabbing is related to the threatening note.

A group of students at the school claiming an affiliation with the violent Central American gang MS-13 had been harassing his son for months, the father said. Now, the boy won’t be going back. The father said he is removing him from the neighborhood school the boy attended since Kindergarten and he attended himself as a kid.

"It’s pretty sad. It had been a great neighborhood school all these years and now it’s not even safe for me to send my kids to," he said.

Police and school officials did not immediately respond to calls for comment. More details to follow.