1988 article may help clarify Ben Carson claims

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, now a GOP presidential contender. (CJ Gunther, EPA)

With more than a dozen candidates still clambering for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, each trying to distinguish themselves while knocking their opponent, much attention has been paid to the campaign claims of noted Detroit neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson — particularly the veracity of claims he has made recently about his once explosive rage as a young man and teen.

Specific questions have come up about Carson’s latest claims that he once went after his mother with a hammer and how at age 14 he stabbed another young man while arguing over a radio — the young man was identified as a classmate named “Bob” in Carson’s 1990 biography Gifted Hands

Because Carson grew up in Detroit and gained such fame as a surgeon, The Free Press

Carson has cited the two claims several times in the past 27 years. And while some of the details of Carson’s recent recollections haven’t always tracked, the basic scenarios of the incidents seems to fit the larger narrative:

A May 15, 1988, Detroit Free PressParade

As for Carson’s reported claim in recent interviews that he once tried to strike his mother with a hammer, a passage of the Detroit Free Press

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