“Why would anybody know about, you know, private incidents like that?” Carson said. Carson then responded that the only people who would know about the encounters were the people who were victims.
Serfaty later reminded Carson that CNN spoke to elementary, junior high and high school classmates who knew him throughout his life and that none of them could recall violent incidents. “I don’t want to expose people without their knowledge, but remember, when I was 14, when the knifing episode occurred, that’s when I changed, that’s when most of the people I talked to began to know who I was, they didn’t know me before then,” Carson said.ĬNN interviewed people for this report who knew Carson as early as elementary school. In a media availability during his book tour in Florida on Thursday after publication of CNN’s piece, the network’s Sunlen Serfaty asked Carson about the investigation and why CNN could not find anyone who could corroborate the story. “No comment and moving on…… Happy Halloween!!!!!”ĬNN contacted the campaign once again Wednesday afternoon to share its findings and received the same response. “Why would anyone cooperate with your obvious witch hunt?” Williams wrote in an email last Friday. CNN also asked the campaign for documentation of any disciplinary actions that resulted. “I was trying to kill somebody,” Carson said, describing the incident – which he has said occurred at age 14 in ninth grade – during a September forum at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.īut nine friends, classmates and neighbors who grew up with Carson told CNN they have no memory of the anger or violence the candidate has described.īen Carson is pictured third from the left.Ĭarson’s campaign adviser and business manager, Armstrong Williams, declined repeated requests by CNN to provide details about the history of violence Carson has described, including the identities of his alleged victims and witnesses. In his 1990 autobiography, “Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story,” Carson describes those acts as flowing from an uncontrollable “pathological temper.” The violent episodes he has detailed in his book, in public statements and in interviews, include punching a classmate in the face with his hand wrapped around a lock, leaving a bloody three-inch gash in the boy’s forehead attempting to attack his own mother with a hammer following an argument over clothes hurling a large rock at a boy, which broke the youth’s glasses and smashed his nose and, finally, thrusting a knife at the belly of his friend with such force that the blade snapped when it luckily struck a belt buckle covered by the boy’s clothes. And, by extension, God owns the University of Michigan and everything else.Ben Carson, the soft-spoken, Yale-educated brain surgeon who has surged in the GOP presidential race, has written and spoken powerfully of divine intervention at several pivotal moments in his life.Īt the core of his narrative of spiritual redemption are his acts of violence as an angry young man - stabbing, rock throwing, brick hurling and baseball bat beating - that preceded Carson’s sudden transformation into the composed figure who stands before voters today.
As a Chrisitan, I believe that God- my Heavenly Father- not only created the universe, but He controls it. Actually, I had been teasing, and maybe it wasn’t playing fair. And understandably because they came from extremely wealthy homes. “Carson’s old man owns the University of Michigan.” Several students were impressed. “Did you hear that?” he yelled at one of the others. “I’m going to the University of Michigan Medical School.” One time when this freaking out was going on and I didn’t enter in, one of my friends turned to me, “Carson, aren’t you worried?” I seldom got involved in what I called freaking out, but this kind of talk happened often, especially during our senior year. “Or anywhere else,” he added.Īnother mentioned a different school, but the students’ worries were essentially the same. “I don’t know if I’ll get in at Stanford,” one premed said to me after he had sent in his application.
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