MIAMI – Kailenn Hollinger said he was at school in Miami when he feared for his life. He was also worried about his classmates getting hurt and about a girl who he considered to be a friend.
Kailenn said the girl had brought a weapon to school. It wasn’t a gun; it was a sharp kitchen knife — and he worried that adults didn’t know that she was keeping it in her book bag.
“She got mad ... She said she was going to kill everybody,” Kailenn said. “And then the next day, she brought a knife to school.”
A police investigation later revealed the girl was crying and yelling after her team lost a game during a physical education class. Kailenn took quick action to prevent yet another violent tragedy from happening at a school.
“I went to go tell the principal,” Kailenn said later adding that he did so because “when somebody brings something like a weapon to school you always have to tell.”
School security recovered the steak knife and the girl was able to get the help that she needed, police said. Meanwhile, Kailenn’s mother Jovonna Hollinger said she didn’t learn about his courage until a school district employee called her.
“I am proud of him,” Hollinger said on Thursday after a group of police officers hailed him a hero in Miami.
Kailenn, now a third-grade student at Nathan B. Young Elementary School in Opa-locka, wore a long sleeve shirt and tie. He stood on a stage at the Miami Police Department station downtown and shook Chief Manuel A. Morales’s hand.
Hollinger was also on stage when First Assistant Chief Cherise Gause handed Kailenn an engraved plaque and a gift bag before he smiled for a group photo. He was one of a few students, out of hundreds of nominees, who received the Do the Right Thing Award during a ceremony.
Do The Right Thing of Miami, a nonprofit organization, runs the nationally-recognized award program in an ongoing effort to regularly reward local students’ “positive behavior, accomplishments, and good deeds.”
As the winner of the elementary school category, Kailenn received a family trip to Rapids Waterpark in Riviera Beach, two Miami Marlins tickets, a coupon for a free Papa John’s pizza, a certificate of recognition, a congratulatory letter, and a Do the Right Thing T-shirt and bumper sticker.