A student from a Pennsylvania Bible college was arrested and charged with a high misdemeanor for carrying a pocketknife at the subway station in Times Square during a visit to New York, The Columbus Dispatch reported.
Clayton Baltzer, 19, who attends Baptist Bible College & Seminary in Clarks Summit, Pa., has paid a $125 fine and completed two days of community service for the March 27 offense.
He is becoming something of a poster child for "the prosecution of honest citizens carrying knives," Doug Ritter, chairman of the advocacy group Knife Rights, told the paper.
Baltzer, a camping-ministry major who considers the arrest part of God’s plan, tells the paper that he's "never been in trouble before" and would use similar knives to whittle for children at special-needs camps.
But, nonetheless, a few years ago, New York cracked down on illegal knives, the paper reported. Ohio's case law, meanwhile, leans toward not considering a common pocket knife a deadly weapon.
The report said the arrest will likely drop from Baltzer’s record in a year, but that Baltzer may have soured on the Big Apple.
"I don't plan on visiting New York unless I have to," he said, the paper reported.
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