Students Mistaken for Robbers During Prank; One Is Shot

In normally sedate Rancho Palos Verdes, three Rolling Hills High students on a night scavenger hunt accidentally triggered a shooting that authorities said narrowly missed being a tragedy.

The object of the youths’ game was to get the license plate of the school’s varsity baseball coach, Garry Poe.

After the prank aborted and the panicky youths tried to make their getaway, Poe’s neighbor Carl Faulkner, 43, shot at the boys, wounding one of them slightly, according to Detective Bill Coffey of the Sheriff’s Department.

The detective said he will present the case today to the district attorney’s office in connection with possible trespassing charges against the youths, whose names were not released because of their age, and possible assault charges against Faulkner.

“The possibilities are that almost any one of the parties involved could be prosecuted for something,” said Coffey.

Intruder Seen

Faulkner’s wife said in a brief interview that he did not want to talk about what happened. The youths could not be reached for comment.

The incident began shortly after 10 p.m. Sunday night when Poe’s 13-year-old daughter noticed that someone was outside the house in the 90 block of Rockinghorse Road.

Poe said that when he went out to look, “I heard someone flying through the bushes. I took off after them. I didn’t have my shoes on, so I was on the street. Whoever was there got in the car and the car, without any lights on, went around the corner.”

But the car was headed the wrong way, to a dead end.

Meanwhile, Faulkner, a neighbor whose house across the street had been burglarized recently, emerged with a .357 magnum pistol, according to police.

“When we saw them go down the dead end, I went back and told (my wife) to call the police,” Poe said.

“They came (back) up the hill. They just floored it and came through. As they were going around the corner, I heard a popping,” Poe said.

The popping noise was Faulkner firing his weapon, Coffey said.

The bullet went through the car and into the upper right arm of one of the youths, who headed for Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Harbor City, according to the detective.

The flesh wound was not serious, but it proved to be the unmasking of the scavengers. Hospital authorities, as required by law when confronted with a bullet wound, called police, Coffey said.

Meanwhile, back at the Poe residence, police had discovered a screw and nut from the front license plate of the coach’s car on the ground. “I told the police it (was) a letterman’s club initiation or a scavenger hunt,” Poe said.

The coach said the youths apologized to him at school and later called his house to apologize to his daughter. He pleaded for the public not to blow the event out of proportion.

‘These Are Not Thugs’

“I can certainly remember doing some pretty idiot things” as a teen-ager, he said. “I told the kids, ‘If you just asked for the license plate, it’s yours. I would have taken it off for you. It’s no big deal.’

“These are not thugs. These are not malicious kids. You are talking about great kids. Thank God, nothing else happened.”

Coffey had a stern warning for those thinking of taking part in a similar scavenger hunt.

“Most of them involve some form of trespassing and petty theft, sometimes amounting to grand theft, and sometimes they involve endangering the public safety because they take street signs,” he said.

“There is the potential for somebody to get hurt or killed. I would counsel anyone who is thinking about going on a scavenger hunt to limit it to something they can get by knocking on someone’s door.”