Placentia Students Fear Walking Home in Wake of Murder

The cars began lining up in the driveway of Tuffree Junior High School 20 minutes before the final bell rang Wednesday. By the end of the school day at 2:45 p.m., there were cars in the driveway, cars in the parking lot and more cars waiting on the street.

Parents, who once felt secure enough to let their children walk home alone on Placentia’s quiet tree-lined streets, said they no longer feel that way. The kidnaping of Tuffree student Wendy Rachelle Osborn, 14, as she walked along those streets and her subsequent murder has changed all that.

Sue Cooper said she began picking up her daughter after she learned of Osborn’s Jan. 20 disappearance. Cooper was angry, she said, that her 13-year-old daughter, Andrea, can no longer do something as simple as walk back and forth to school.

“I think you tend to feel that someone has put you in jail,” Cooper said with irritation in her voice as she waited in her car, which was one of about a dozen cars idling in the school driveway Wednesday afternoon. “Instead, it should be the other way around.”

Walking Reduced

On Wednesday, children didn’t rush out school doors to walk down neighborhood streets at the end of the day. Some sat on the lawn, waiting for their parents to arrive. Others waited around for a group of friends to gather so they could ride bicycles home together. Still others waited for older brothers or sisters to pick them up or escort them home.

And parents waited patiently until their children, often with friends, clambered into the car. As one would leave, another car took its place. By 3:15 p.m., parents still were arriving to pick up their children.

“This is obviously an increase in cars,” Principal Richard P. Vouga said as he stood watching the stream of vehicles turning off Kraemer Boulevard into the school driveway.

To help students and their parents deal with the emotions and fears stirred by the kidnap-murder of the teen-ager, whose body was found Sunday along a bridle path in the Carbon Canyon area of San Bernardino County, Placentia Unified School District officials scheduled a meeting at Tuffree Junior High on Wednesday evening.

In the meantime, parents seemed clearly disturbed by the crime that had happened in their midst.

“There Is No Choice”

Sue McAdam has always picked up her 14-year-old son, Bill. But before Wendy’s disappearance, she said, it was an option. “Now there is no choice, absolutely no choice,” she said. “There is definitely more concern among parents about this. Children can not walk back and forth to school like they used to.”

McAdam, who is on the board of the school’s Parent-Teacher Assn., said Wednesday’s steady procession of parents in cars picking up their children after school is more like what happens on rainy days.

“All of these cars are very unusual, and it will probably remain like this for quite a while,” McAdam said.

One waiting mother, who declined to give her name, said that before Wendy’s death, her 13-year-old son always walked back and forth to school.

“I am angry,” said the brown-haired, bespectacled woman from the window of her brown car. “You’d think that when they get old enough you can let them have more responsibility. But it is not like that. I don’t feel secure. Kids can not be kids anymore.”

Audra Weaser doesn’t have any children of her own, but she pulled into the school’s driveway in a red sports car and picked up Jamie Johnson. “I’m here because her family is out of town,” she explained as the 14-year-old girl climbed into the seat of Weaser’s convertible.

Different Approach

Other parents took a different approach in reacting to news of Wendy Osborn’s murder. Carol Spinden was among the waiting mothers Wednesday, but she said she was only waiting to pick up her 14-year-old son, Steve, who didn’t ride his bike to school that day because she had taken him to the dentist.

“I am not usually here,” Spinden said. “We are not changing the way that we live, but I am educating my son on what to do.”

Debbie Walters, a regular car-pooling parent, said Wednesday that she lived “a street away” from the Osborn family and that she and other neighbors were very upset. “This hits us close to home,” Walters said.

Meanwhile, mortuary officials announced that funeral services for Wendy Osborn have been rescheduled for 11 a.m. Saturday) at Eastside Christian Church, 2505 E. Yorba Linda Blvd., Fullerton.