Girl dies from school stabbing

An 18-year-old student was stabbed to death Thursday morning in a school parking lot and a 24-year-old man has been charged with murder, authorities said.

Natalia Allison Holmes, a student at Carolina Forest High School, died at Conway Medical Center at 8:29 a.m., said Horry County chief deputy coroner Dan Bellamy.

Edwin Lee Cornelius of Aynor was arrested shortly after the incident and charged in the slaying, said prosecutor Fran Humphries. He said Cornelius had waived bond and would remain in jail until the grand jury meets this summer.

The stabbing happened at 7:50 a.m. in a parking lot shared by Carolina Forest High School and Carolina Forest Middle School, police said. Several teachers and students witnessed the attack.

“I saw the girl’s dead body,” said 12-year-old Chizo Ekechukwu, a sixth-grader at the school. She said she did not know the victim.

“My dad came and got me. People were crying and freaking out. A lot were going home,” she said. “We were told to go to our classes and get in lock-down.”

Chizo’s father, Peter Ekechukwu, is a member of the school improvement council. He said he has been seeking an increase in the number of resource officers who patrol the schools.

“It is a traumatic incident. I tried to reassure the children that this is not a normal type of incident, this is abnormal and shouldn’t have happened,” he said. “As a member of the school improvement committee, I believe the number of resource officers should be increased.”

Officials said both Carolina Forest Middle School and Carolina Forest High School were on lock-down following the stabbing. School remained in session, but parents were allowed to remove their children.

Edward Boyd, spokesman for the Horry County School District, said Holmes was a recent transfer student from California and did not have any siblings at the school.

“This incident is absolutely a tragedy,” Boyd said, “but I don’t think there is anything the school could have done to avoid it.”

County police Sgt. Bob Carr would not say whether the slaying stemmed from a domestic dispute.

“We haven’t gotten that far into it yet,” he said. “We are still investigating the incident and have a number of people to interview.”

Investigators believe it was an isolated incident. “At no point was anyone in danger at the high school,” Carr said.

Jill Watts, 49, works at an electric company near the schools.

“People just sat in their car and waited, and when you saw the ambulances and fire trucks and police cars going on, you knew something was going on,” she said. “I think if I had been sitting there with my child, taking her to school there I would have turned around and I would have left. Truly, I would have left.”

Conway is about 15 miles west of Myrtle Beach.