BOY OF 14 IS CAGED FOR CLASS STABBING; Jealousy led to attack.

Byline: Gordon McIlwraith

A THUG aged 14 who stabbed a classmate was locked up for two years yesterday.

The boy yelled: "Who wants it next?" as his victim lay with a collapsed lung.

As other pupils huddled together in terror, the attacker laughed and said: "I feel so much better, I've never felt better."

The victim, also 14, had emergency surgery to save his life.

Yesterday, Lord Brailsford was told at the High Court in Edinburgh that the boy had been seen by a psychiatrist.

This revealed that the attacker was upset that his natural father had abandoned him before he was even born.

He was jealous that the victim, whose dad had also abandoned him, could cope with it, while he couldn't.

The attacker, who cannot be named for legal reasons, admitted assaulting the victim to his severe injury and endangering his life at an Ayrshire secondary school in March.

He took a kitchen knife to school and, while their teacher briefly left the class, he stabbed his victim in the back.

The teacher, who had been alerted to the attack, returned with a colleague and the boy agreed to drop the knife.

Susan Duff, defending, said "He did something out of character.

"Although his mother and stepfather are bewildered and upset by his actions they remain very supportive."

The boy will be kept in a secure school and supervised for a year on release.