According to Miss Stephanie Crawford, Boo stabbed his father in the leg with a pair of scissors while he was clipping items from the Maycomb Tribune.

“Boo was sitting in the livingroom cutting some items from The Maycomb Tribune to paste in his scrapbook. His father entered the room. As Mr. Radley passed by, Boo drove the scissors into his parent’s leg, pulled them out, wiped them on his pants, and resumed his activities.” (1.13)

According to Miss Stephanie, Boo’s parents refused to put him in an asylum, and Boo wasn’t charged with anything following the stabbing. As the story goes, Boo was locked in the courthouse basement because the sheriff did not have the heart to put him in the jail alongside Negroes. Miss Stephanie is Maycomb’s notorious gossip and fuels the children’s imaginations with stories of Arthur ‘Boo’ Radley. During the summer, Jem, Scout, and Dill subscribe to the stories and rumors of Boo Radley that they hear throughout the town, and eventually make up a game where they play/act Boo’s life story. They even recreate the scene in which Boo stabs Mr. Radley using a pair of scissors that they took from the sewing drawer when Calpurnia wasn’t looking.