Girls try to find peace after school knife attack

MACCLENNY, Fla. – Fighting back tears, a Baker County High School graduate is opening up about a friend and classmate who pulled a knife on her in school last year.

Deputies arrested Rheanna Hodges, now 18, who was charged as an adult with aggravated battery with a dangerous weapon, aggravated assault with a dangerous weapon, and simple assault, for holding a knife to Kimberly Stoutenborough's throat.

"I just felt like why me? Why did this have to happen? I trusted her. I tried helping her and this happens to me. Who's going to hurt me now?" Stoutenborough, (pictured at right), said. 

While in court, Hodges pleaded out and a judge sentenced her to two years of house arrest and 13 years of probation.

Officials said that Alyssa McLaren, another of Stoutenborough's friends, wrestled the knife away from Hodges, likely saving Stoutenborough's life, and both girls are still trying to figure out how this all happened. 

The girls said Hodges was upset about a school club that, as President, Hodges felt she was getting forced out of. They are still asked about the event all the time and want to finally tell the community what happened inside the cafeteria at Baker County High School last year. 

They want to close this chapter of their lives and be done with it, because they still have a lot of healing to do.

"I felt like part of me died that day," Stoutenborough said.

Baker County Sheriff's Office booking photo of Rheana Hodges

With one knife in her hand, another in her jacket pocket and two more along with a suicide note in her backpack, Hodges (pictured), told everyone in the cafeteria to listen up and went after her friend, Stoutenborough said. 

"My hair was pulled, I heard screaming, I felt something on my throat, and I kind of looked down and saw it was a knife," Stoutenborough said.

McLaren was standing nearby and threw herself in the middle of the two, separated by a sharp filet knife.

"I kept pulling and pulling, and we were going back and forth with it, and I was trying to make sure it was tilted not toward me or her, because I didn't want to hurt her. I was mad at her because of everything but I had taken care of her. I've sat with her while she's cried. I've held her. I've talked to her. She was one of my friends," McLaren said.

McLaren eventually got hold of the weapon, and Stoutenborough took off.

"I ran. I high-tailed. I was thinking in the back of the cafeteria there was a door or something I could get out, run, but my vision was blackened. I felt like a scared animal. I did not know where to go," Stoutenborough said. "I heard some people screaming outside, but it was faint. I felt like I was even going to faint."

After the traumatic event, McLaren (pictured) moved to Texas to finish high school while Stoutenborough stayed in Baker County, recently graduating, and suffering through night terrors. 

Hodges was ordered to stay away from the girls and was released to a private healthcare facility for psychiatric evaluation. She still has one more year of house arrest and is still on probation until she's 30.

"When we found out about the suicide note, she said she was going to take somebody with her. And what she had told the officers and the officers had told me was that her first plan was to just stand in the girl's bathroom and just cut them as they come in," Stoutenborough said.

Hodges wears a GPS monitor, cannot go within a mile of the high school while it is in session, and must attempt to get a GED.