(BUZZFEED) — A former colleague of Ben Carson is defending the retired neurosurgeon, whose story of an attempted stabbing has come under intense media scrutiny over the past week.
Dr. Robert Prince, who worked with Carson at John Hopkins Hospital in the late 1980s, said on WBAL’s Jimmy Mathis Show over the weekend that years before Carson wrote his first book, the then-practicing pediatric neurosurgeon told him of the time that he tried to stab a fellow classmate when he was 14 years old, only to have his knife break on his friend’s belt buckle.
Carson would go on to tell this story in his best-selling memoir, Gifted Hands. Last week, CNN reported that several of Carson’s neighbors, friends, and classmates did not recall the incident. Carson has stood by his story, one that he says turned his life around for the better.
“Well, it was, you know, long after it happened. I think it happened when he was 14 years old, but it was also quite a bit of time before a book, before a movie, and before a would be president,” Prince said.
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