Costa Mesa Student’s Body Moved : School Tries to Cope With Youth’s Death, Shootings

The body of a Costa Mesa youth who went on a shooting rampage at an exclusive Arizona prep school was taken to a Bakersfield mortuary Monday as school officials worked to help other students cope with the effects of the incident.

Apparently panicked at the thought of a suspension from the Orme School, Jarrett Arthur Huskey--a popular 17-year-old junior who had just been named football captain--went on a shooting spree Friday night after he was found drinking beer on the campus. Huskey had been told that the infraction meant a one-week suspension.

The gunfire left three teachers wounded before Huskey was shot and killed by police.

Parents of many of the other students traveled to the Mayer, Ariz., campus of the boarding school over the weekend to be with their children or to take them away, and those who could not come jammed phone lines, school officials said. Counselors have been meeting with students to help them cope with the tragic events, officials said.

“We think of this as a family,” said Charlie Orme, the headmaster, whose father established the institution in 1929. “All of these kids are quite close.

“Now, we want to pull together as a community and work through this trauma. It’s been a great tragedy to everyone. I . . . have built this school over 40 years, and it’s possible that an event like this could be the end of that. I just hope not,” he said.

Orme School, with an enrollment of 180, is a well-known college-preparatory school located in a rural area 75 miles north of Phoenix and near Prescott.

Richard Powell, the assistant headmaster, said: “I think the alcohol was parenthetical to what happened later. We just don’t know. Perhaps it was the thing that triggered it. He was faced with a suspension for this, and I think the fear of going home or having to leave school or whatever might have set it off.”

A spokesman for a Bakersfield mortuary said that the youth’s body was being shipped there, but the family had not yet made final arrangements. It could not be determined why services were being held in Bakersfield. Huskey’s parents are divorced.

Students said that Huskey lived with his father, Arthur Huskey, while not in school. The elder Huskey is a businessman in the Costa Mesa-Newport Beach area, according to school officials, who did not have information about the boy’s mother.

In an attempt to reconstruct the Friday evening shootings, authorities said that Huskey went to the home of Richard Kinney, who supervises the school’s shooting range, and obtained a .45-caliber pistol, saying he had forgotten to unload the gun after target practice earlier that day.

He then went to the campus residence of Jack Thayer, 40, director of admissions and marketing, and shot him in the stomach. It was about 8:30 p.m. Thayer, initially in critical condition, was listed as serious but stable Monday. School officials said he had lost a kidney.

Huskey then returned to the shooting instructor’s house, shot the lock off the gun closet and obtained a shotgun and ammunition, officials said. The youth ran through the campus, firing in the air, before shooting in the direction of Gary Winfield, 43, a computer teacher who suffered shotgun pellet wounds in the hand, leg and face.

Powell said that Winfield had learned of the danger on campus and had just told a study-hall instructor to turn off the lights in the library. Winfield was shot as he left the library.

Another teacher, Laurie Smith, was hit by stray pellets but not seriously injured.

During the shooting spree, school officials used the public address system to tell students to turn out lights and lie on the floor.

Yavapai County sheriff’s deputies who had been called to the scene confronted the youth in a corral and ordered him to drop the shotgun. When Huskey, described as an avid hunter and outdoorsman, raised the gun and pointed it toward them, the deputies fired, hitting him twice.

Dr. Philip Keen, Yavapai County medical examiner, said that Huskey was hit in the chest. There was immediate evidence of only “minimum intoxication,” but toxicological tests are being performed to determine whether drugs were involved, he said.

Huskey had entered Orme last year as a sophomore and had just been named one of the school’s two football captains, assistant headmaster Powell said.

“I think his dad told him that if he got in any trouble, he might as well not come home,” said Jeff Fairfield, a former roommate of Huskey. “I don’t know what would have made him do this. I lived with him for a whole year, and the guy I knew was not the same guy we knew last night.

“He loved the school. It was all he had. It gave him the chance to do what he wanted to do,” Fairfield explained.

Huskey was a C student but was an underachiever, school officials said. Still, he was devoted to the school, they added.

Powell agreed that Huskey loved the school.

” . . . That makes it really tragic,” Powell said. “The school meant a great deal to him. It was the most important thing in his life”

Although Huskey had been disciplined before, “he had not been the one you would pick out (to) do this sort of thing,” Powell said. “He was not a loner; (there was) no warning of this, which makes it scary.”

Times wire services were used in this report.