Junior High Boy Critically Injured in Fall Down Shaft

Most weekends, vandals make their way into Hollenbeck Junior High School in East Los Angeles and pry the padlocks off many of the gates. Most Mondays, the maintenance crew puts new locks back on.

Unfortunately for 14-year-old Heber Reyes, they didn’t do it quickly enough this week.

Reyes was critically injured Monday when he fell down a 20-foot air shaft during his lunch break while clowning around with some friends. His pals apparently shoved him against an unlocked fence that opens into the shaft, school officials said.

The boy, a seventh-grade student at the campus on East 6th Street, suffered a fractured skull and internal injuries, which left him unconscious. He was in critical but stable condition at County-USC Medical Center.

Crane Used for Rescue

Firefighters and paramedics reached the boy by lowering a stretcher from a crane and. placed him in an ambulance 45 minutes after the accident occurred.

The shaft, which houses an electrical vault, is surrounded by an 8-foot fence. School officials said the fence, where students often congregate, is normally padlocked.

“It was not padlocked” Monday, Principal Evelyn Lucero said. “It should have been.”

Lucero said one student told her she saw “a group of boys giggling and laughing” next to the fenced area, “and all of a sudden it got quiet and she saw him (Reyes) falling.” The principal said she was certain there was no malice involved.

Rescuers said the boy landed face down on the concrete floor.

The boy’s father was telephoned by school officials and arrived at the campus while the rescue was in progress.

After the accident, which occurred only a few feet from the nutrition area’s lunch tables, school officials ended the lunch hour early and sent students back to class.

“It makes me feel so bad,” said a teacher’s aide who declined to give her name but said she was friendly with the boy.

“It’s rough, because all the kids become your kids,” said an instructor, also asking that his name not be used.