Teen-Ager Holds Class Captive at Anaheim School

A 15-year-old Loara High School student, armed with a shotgun and pistol, walked into a drama class, shot one boy in the face and held other students hostage for more than a half hour Thursday, Anaheim authorities said.

The armed ninth-grader, reportedly beset with family problems, ordered the drama teacher out of the room and later allowed the injured student and terrified female classmates to leave. The student held the rest of the class at gunpoint while talking to police on a classroom phone and then surrendered.

“Who would have thought he was serious?” said the wounded student, 15-year-old Anthony Lopez, interviewed at his hospital bed Thursday evening. “I mean, the guy was calm. He didn’t look crazy. . . .

“I asked him whether the gun was for real and then I said if it was real, why didn’t he just start shooting.”

Lopez was in satisfactory condition at UCI Medical Center in Orange after being shot in the left side of his face. His jaw is shattered, and the bullet is lodged in his neck, said Lopez’s mother, Pam Lopez. He is the son of an Anaheim police officer.

Police said the incident began shortly before 9:30 a.m. when the youth, identified by students as ninth-grader Cory Robb, entered the school’s choir room where the drama class was being held and ordered the teacher, Kenneth Tuttle, to leave. The teacher tried to take the rest of the class with him, but Robb insisted that Tuttle leave alone, students said.

About 10 minutes later, after firing one shot, Robb allowed most of the girls in the class and the wounded boy to walk out, said Police Lt. Marc Hedgpeth. Police negotiators talked Robb into surrendering about 10:10 a.m.

By the time the police had talked Robb out of the room, word of the hostage situation had spread. Students were lined up to call their parents on the two pay phones outside the school office, and many of the girls were crying.

“My son called me from here and said, ‘Get me out of here. There’s a shooting going on,’ ” said Jackie Blacketer, who waited for her son Brian along with other parents who said they had heard word of the shooting on the radio or from friends and neighbors.

Most of the school’s 1,600 students remained in class for the rest of the day. Two psychologists were sent to the school to talk to students from the drama class, and three psychologists will be at the campus today, said Anaheim Union High School District Assistant Supt. Lee Kellogg.

Police and school officials provided few details about the incident and what might have led up to it. Family members refused to discuss the incident. Students and parents, some shaken by the ordeal, talked about what they knew of the young man and his problems.

They described the brown-haired freshman as a troubled but friendly youth who fought bitterly with his stepfather and was upset about his family’s impending move to Northern California. Several students, some of whom said they have known Robb for years, said Robb had also told them that his father, a Vietnam veteran, committed suicide, although that account could not be confirmed by family members.

Several students said Robb had hinted for the past few weeks that he was planning some act involving weapons and possible violence. But they had not taken him seriously, they said.

Drama Class

Nor did most of the students in the drama class at first take seriously the threat posed by Robb, dressed in jeans and a green T-shirt beneath a red-plaid flannel shirt, when he walked into the ampitheater-style classroom and ordered teacher Tuttle to get out.

Tuttle tried to take some students with him, Pam Lopez said, but Robb would not let him and ordered him to leave again.

The teacher could not be reached for comment.

Tuttle had been teaching the class--in which Robb was not enrolled--about the various parts of a theater stage, students said.

“Everybody thought it was a joke,” said ninth-grader Season Rodriguez, who was in the room. “He came in and kicked back, said ‘I’m not gonna hurt you, don’t worry.’ I don’t think Cory meant to go in there and shoot anyone.”

After Tuttle left, Robb--who police said was armed with a .12-gauge, short-barreled shotgun and a semiautomatic handgun--told the students that they could change seats and sit by their friends if they wanted to, said 15-year-old Matt Grimsley.

“He just kind of screwed around,” Grimsley said. “Then he said he wanted to get back at his stepfather.”

Anthony Lopez, said Season Rodriguez, mocked Robb, saying, “ ‘Oh, we’ve got a suicidal killer on our hands.’ ” Other students said Lopez told Robb he didn’t believe the guns were real.

Robb fired one shot in the classroom of 36 students, hitting Lopez in the face, students said.

“He grabbed his face and fell down by my feet,” Grimsley said. “There was blood everywhere. I went to help him, but he (Robb) said, ‘Don’t move.’ ”

Another student talked Robb into allowing the girls--who were crying and screaming after the shooting--to leave, along with the wounded student, Grimsley said. Lopez was able to walk out under his own power, he said.

With only about 10 boys remaining in the classroom, Robb used a phone at the teacher’s desk to try to reach his mother, said Jimmy Hurley, another student in the class.

Lt. Hedgpeth said he did not know if Robb got through to his mother. Someone must have contacted her, he said, because she called police before her son surrendered. She came to the school but did not come onto the school grounds because of the crowd of reporters that had gathered near the entrance, Hedgpeth said.

Anaheim police trained in hostage negotiations contacted Robb on the phone and talked him into surrendering at 10:10 a.m., Hedgpeth said.

Robb is being held at Orange County Juvenile Hall in Orange on charges of attempted murder, aggravated assault, bringing a firearm on campus, false imprisonment and hostage-taking, Hedgpeth said.

One student, 15-year-old Doney Philpott, said Robb told him Wednesday: “ ‘Tomorrow’s my last day. I’m going to come over here and do something bad.’ ”

Philpott said that when he asked Robb what he meant, Robb said he planned to come to school armed and have police call his stepfather to the school. Philpott said Robb told him that when his stepfather arrived, he would shoot him. “I didn’t believe him,” said Philpott, who attended Ball Junior High in Anaheim with Robb. “He used to say things like this all the time.”

Police said students they interviewed Thursday also told them of Robb’s threats and plans. But they said none had been reported to authorities.

Several students said Robb had told them he often fought with his stepfather.

Damien Christian, who called himself “a good friend” of Robb, as did other students, said that Robb told him about his father’s suicide.

“It was after he came back from Vietnam, he killed himself in front of Cory,” Damien said.

A neighbor, who asked not to be identified, said Robb told his son a similar story: that Robb’s father had summoned his son to the attic one day and then shot himself.

Robb’s mother, Kathy Y. McAfee, declined to speak to a reporter at the family’s house, which recently had been sold. Neighbors said Robb’s stepfather, Paul D. McAfee, moved to Northern California for work reasons several months ago and that his wife and stepson planned to follow soon.

“He had told my girls that he didn’t want to move,” said Renay Hill, who lives across the street from Robb. Robb showed one of her daughters--who was in the drama class Thursday morning--a gun Wednesday night, but did not say anything about using it, Hill said.

Another parent, Linda Tucker, said Robb had been a classmate of her daughter’s since elementary school, when she was a room mother.

“I just can’t believe this. I know he got into trouble, but there are worse kids than him,” she said. “He always called me ‘Mrs. Tucker,’ and not many kids do that anymore.

“You hear about other people doing things like this, but not a kid you’ve seen go to school since he was only this high,” she said, putting her hand no higher than her waist.

Robb’s friend Damien Christian said that he sometimes played football or other games with Robb but that Robb “doesn’t really get into sports.”

Christian said that Robb liked reading--particularly Stephen King books and other horror fiction--and he liked guns.

Still, Christian wondered: “Why would he do something like this?”

Season Rodriguez, despite just having suffered through the ordeal, said she felt sorry for Robb.

“I hope he gets help,” she said. “I feel bad for him.”

At UCI Medical Center, Anthony Lopez, too, looked disbelieving as he fingered the bandages wrapped around his neck.

Anthony is the son of Lou Lopez, a resource school officer with the Anaheim Police Department, who is a school board candidate in the Anaheim City School District election Nov. 7.

“It was like a punch, the worst punch ever,” Lopez said of the shot. “But I still didn’t think I was hurt. I thought he fired a paint gun at me. . . . “

Times staff writers Lily Eng, Jean Davidson and Davan Maharaj and Tom McQueeney of Fullerton contributed to this story.

LOARA HIGH SCHOOL

Where: 1765 W. Cerritos Ave., at Euclid Street, west of Disneyland; part of Anaheim Union High School District Opened: September, 1963 Size of campus: 49 acres Principal: Gerald Glenn Number of students: 1,760, grades nine through 12 Number of teachers: 64 Previous violence on campus: No prior serious incidents Other facts, dates or alumni: Kitty Dukakis visited the campus on Oct. 4, 1988, during her husband’s presidential campaign. She warned students against drug abuse, drawing on her own experience of a 26-year dependency on amphetamines, initially used to control her weight. Source: Anaheim Union High District

REAL-LIFE DRAMA: Life imitates horror most students see in movies. Page 3.

Anaheim School Shooting

A 15-year-old Loara High School student, and armed with a shotgun and pistol, shot another student in the face and held a drama class hostage for about 40 minutes before surrendering to Anaheim police Thursday morning. The injured student, is in satisfactory condition. No one else was injured.

According to police and witnesses:

1. Cory Robb entered the choir room, where the drama class was meeting, shortly after 9 a.m. and ordered the teacher, Kenneth Tuttle, to leave.

2. Believing this was a staged event, Anthony Lopez asked if Robb’s guns were real, and was shot.

3. Robb let about 10 girls and the injured Lopez leave.

4. Police talked to Robb on the telephone in the classroom, and at 10:10 a.m., Robb surrendered.