Could’nt they have stopped Scream earlier in Scream 1?

Scream was a good movie but one thing I’ll never understand is, is that when Scream was knocked down multiple times and his knife dropped, instead of running from him they could have just stabbed him instead. I think Casey even had a knife on her when Scream was going after her but instead she just hits him with a phone. I know that it’s only a movie but stopping Scream should have been pretty easy. Atleast in a movie like Saw, the guy tries to shoot Jigsaw towards the end but couldn’t.