School Counselors Help Pupils Cope With the Shock of Classmate’s Death

The morning after 13-year-old Gabriel Soto died during a one-sided game of Russian roulette, a team of counselors hastily assembled at Placerita Junior High School in Newhall to offer the dead boy’s classmates solace and support.

The counselors found scores of students devastated by the news. Most children wept. Some denied that their friend was really dead. Others irrationally blamed themselves for Gabriel’s death. Some, physically shaken by emotion, complained of fatigue and nausea. A few vomited.

Meeting both in large groups and one-on-one, the counselors helped the children traverse what psychologists have identified as the classic stages of grief: disbelief, guilt, anger and sorrow.

But the children were not the only ones to ride an emotional roller coaster that day. The counselors made a heart-tugging journey themselves. Looking back on it, they said, the day was disturbing, demanding and unique.

“We cried with them,” said Marlene Curwin, a school psychologist.

Yet, ultimately, the day was rewarding and even exhilarating, the counselors said. It was, said high school counselor Edel Alonso, an opportunity “to do some real counseling.” It reminded them why they had become counselors in the first place, Alonso added.

It all began a few hours after Gabriel Soto died May 23 from a single gunshot wound to the head. Late that afternoon, a Placerita vice principal called school psychologist Dora Prihar to say that a student had been shot to death. She told Prihar to assemble a team to counsel the boy’s classmates in the morning.

Details were sketchy. The police had not released the name of the victim. “I didn’t know who the student was,” Prihar said. She turned to Curwin in their office, located beside the Placerita campus, and told her the news. “I probably looked pretty white,” Prihar said.

After a few telephone calls, they had their team: Alonso, Prihar, Curwin, psychologists Mary Morris and Kari Holtzman-Bell, district nurse Betty Donnelly and guidance counselors Peggy Stabile and Judy Hart. All work in the William S. Hart Union High School District.

3 Boys

What the counselors did not know was that Gabriel Soto had died in a Valencia apartment while in the company of two other boys, both 14.

Authorities later said one of the 14-year-olds, using his father’s gun, drew the other two into an unusual form of Russian roulette. The boy always held the gun, authorities said, and pointed it at his own head before firing at Gabriel Soto. The boy, whose name was not released because of his age, pleaded not guilty May 26 to a murder charge and is being held at Sylmar Juvenile Hall.

On May 23, the counselors only knew that a child had died violently. In their homes, they uneasily awaited the next morning. Prihar, who had worked with many Placerita students, slept poorly that night. So did Morris. “I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about it,” she said.

The counselors met Placerita Principal Jim Tanner at 7:30 a.m. for a brief meeting. There would be no reporters or photographers on campus, they quickly decided. Tanner, they agreed, would announce the death over the school public address system. They had to quash rumors and provide all the available facts.

That’s when Prihar learned the victim’s name. She was stunned. “I knew Gabriel,” she said.

Met With Students

The counselors spread out, meeting with 12 or 15 students at a time. Some worked with entire classes. Some counselors took children outside and sat with them under trees to talk. Donnelly, the nurse, examined children who said they felt sick. She sent some home to their parents.

In one session, a boy told Stabile that he had asked Gabriel to join him golfing the day the boy died. If he had persuaded Gabriel to golf, he reasoned, his friend would still be alive. He blamed himself for the death.

Other students said they had heard rumors of a student playing Russian roulette. “I knew something like this was going to happen,” a boy told Morris.

Incredibly, one student’s father had died playing the deadly game. “This is exactly what happened to my father,” a girl told Alonso.

Some children brought up the death of Sarah Nan Hodges, a 7-year-old Newhall resident whose strangled body was found stuffed behind the water bed of a 14-year-old boy who lived five houses away from the blonde, blue-eyed girl. The boy, who has been charged with murder, also attended Placerita Junior High School.

Unnerving Coincidence

The coincidence of two Placerita students facing murder charges unnerved some students. Both were newcomers and had attended Placerita only a few months before their arrests. Some children, Stabile said, wondered if the boys were connected somehow or had come from the same city before moving to Newhall.

“This is the kind of thinking that goes on in their minds,” Stabile said.

How did counselors handle all this?

When able, they presented the facts. Sometimes they cried along with the students, Alonso said. They also found themselves laughing along with students who happily recalled how Gabriel was a prankster who enjoyed water balloon fights, wrestling and firecrackers.

The counselors watched approvingly as the students drew a large sympathy card for the Soto family. Other students decided to raise money to pay for the funeral. Some youngsters, joined by students from nearby Hart High School, would later paint a mural honoring Gabriel on the back of a gas station not far from the boy’s home on Arch Street.

But mostly, the counselors spent their time listening sympathetically. They allowed the children to grieve openly, Prihar said.

Exhausting Day

By day’s end, the counselors said, they were exhausted. After such a day, “you would think you would be able to sleep well,” Prihar said. She didn’t. “I kept reliving all those tearful scenes.”

The mood at Placerita has returned to normal, Tanner said. Some children, of course, did not need counseling and quickly resumed their regular routines, he said. The crisis team did not come back after the first day.

The experience left the counselors with mixed feelings. Alonso said she felt sorry for the grieving children but also took pride in her professionalism after Gabriel’s death. The day had been a challenge, the counselors said. It had also been a break from routine paper work.

In just a few hours, they watched children go from denial to a reluctant resignation that people, even young ones, really do die. In short, they felt they had made a difference, Curwin said. “When you do crisis counseling,” she said, “you see changes real fast.”