A mother told The Nassau Guardian yesterday that she is afraid to have her 15-year-old son go out alone after he was brutally beaten and stabbed six times on Parliament Street following the Independence Day Junkanoo Parade.  Erin Fowler said he was stabbed so deep at one point that his lung was punctured.  He told The Guardian during an interview that he did not think he would survive the injuries he sustained.

Fowler was released from hospital Saturday - one week after independence - and he still had visible puncture wounds on his back along with stitches and a bandage to his side.  Fowler recalled that a large group of men accosted him, asking him to hand over his clothes and sneakers. He and his two older cousins were about to head home from the parade.

"A couple of boys wanted my clothes and stuff, so I just started to run and when I ran I fell down," Fowler said.  "They just started to beat me up and I didn't know I got stabbed and then my cousin helped me walk to the hospital."  Fowler said as many as 30 people chased him and he insisted he did not know who stabbed him.  He recalled, however, that many of the boys who piled on top of him looked as young as he is.

Fowler's mother, Marcia Seymour, said the night of the parade was the first time she let her son go out to such an event without her.  "I couldn't believe it because I have never even been to school for him for any kind of incident. So I knew he was a good boy," she said. "Of course, I have the regular teenage drama, but I just didn't think (it would be) my child."
Seymour said she has not received much help from police, but hopes the assailants who assaulted her son will be caught and brought to justice.

"Touching that close to home, it's like something seriously needs to be done," she said.  "I don't know if it has to touch their (police officers') homes for it to be done."
Fowler said he had a message for the people who could have taken his life, "They need to stop what they are doing because they wouldn't want it to happen to them."

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