Nick Muscavage

@nmuscavage

EAST BRUNSWICK - A female student was stabbed in the face during an altercation on Wednesday morning at the Middlesex County Vo-Tech, a school official said.

"The incident took place in a restroom and two students were involved," said Brian Loughlin, the superintendent of Middlesex County Vo-Tech School District. "One student, unprovoked, had a confrontation with the second student and injured the student in the process. It was scissors that were involved in the incident.

"She had an injury above her eye," he continued. "The EMTs treated her at the scene and she was transferred accordingly to the hospital."

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The stabbing took place around 8:50 a.m. at the East Brunswick campus, before the start of the official school day, Loughlin said.

Both students were females, he said. The injured student was taken to University Hospital in Newark, while the girl who stabbed her was taken into custody.

"She was at the scene when the police arrived and they immediately took her into custody," Loughlin said.

The incident is still being investigated by police. The East Brunswick Police Department referred questions to the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office, which did not respond immediately with comment.

Loughlin said that police and school officials handled the situation well and that law enforcement's response was "fantastic."

"We have school safety protocols that we immediately used," he said. "We have a police officer onsite all day long, so there is a police officer in the building. So the response time was less than a minute."

Other students were in their classrooms under the school's emergency protocol so that the injured girl could be treated without any "onlookers," Loughlin said.

"It was an isolated incident," he said. "There was never a threat to anyone else in the building."

Staff Writer Nick Muscavage: 908-243-6615; ngmuscavage@gannettnj.com