CALIFORNIA BRIEFING / SAN JOSE

Two fifth-graders were suspended from a school after one of them paid the other to stab a classmate, police say.

The mother of the 11-year-old victim says her son told her that the attacker pulled out a switchblade at Schallenberger Elementary School and said he had been paid to stab him. Nancy Silverstein says the attacker then lunged at her son but missed.

The March 12 incident remains under police investigation. Meanwhile, both suspects have been suspended and transferred to different schools.

A spokeswoman for the San Jose Unified School District says that the school doesn’t typically experience these kinds of problems and that officials believe they adequately punished the children involved.