Scary Real-Life Drama Unfolds Before Students

When 15-year-old Cory Robb entered Kenneth Tuttle’s second-period class at Loara High School in Anaheim toting two weapons, his classmates thought it was an act--after all, this was a drama class.

But one hour later, after the blood from a wounded classmate stained the floor and Robb, a freshman described as quiet by his friends, had been led away in handcuffs by police, the students knew that this had been real life. Or at least real life imitating the kind of horror most of them had only seen on television or read about in other places, not their own school, where the Saxon football team was to play El Modena High School Thursday night.

The students had been held hostage by one of their own, and for almost an hour, their fate was in his hands. Robb injured one boy by shooting him in the jaw, but eventually gave himself up after police talked with him via a telephone that sat on Tuttle’s desk.

“He walked in with two guns,” said Jimmy Hurley, 15, who was in the classroom. “We thought it was a joke because, I mean, it was a drama class.”

After Tuttle had taken roll, he passed out a stack of papers to his beginning drama students that explained such fundamentals of the theater as “stage left” and “stage right.”

Robb entered the stage platform in the auditorium-style classroom from stage right and pointed a gun at Tuttle.

“(Robb) said, ‘Would you please go lock the door?’ ” said Season Rodriguez, a 15-year-old who was in Tuttle’s class.

“Then (Robb) said, ‘OK, now go to the counseling office,’ and all of us stood up, but he said to Mr. Tuttle, ‘No, you alone.’ ” she said. The teacher left.

Robb “was really calm, very coherent,” she said.

“He said he wasn’t going to hurt anyone. ‘I just want to get even with my stepfather,’ ” she recalled Cobb’s saying.

At first, the students said, no one was very worried, even though he had two weapons--a shotgun and a pistol.

Several of the students were joking with him, but one student in particular, 15-year-old Anthony Lopez, began taunting Robb, Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said that while the other students were still not worried, she became frightened and wanted to call her father from the telephone on Tuttle’s desk.

“Cory said I could,” she said. “I was already crying. Everybody else thought it was a joke.”

It was while she was on the phone to her father that Robb shot Lopez.

Many of the other students knew Robb fairly well because they attended the same elementary and junior high schools together in the Anaheim area. But Lopez, a sophomore who attended Katella High School last year, did not know him well, according to his mother, Pam Lopez.

As Lopez continued his mocking, Robb raised the pistol and shot him. Stunned, Lopez grabbed his neck and went to sit beside Hurley.

“He just said, ‘I’ve been shot!’ ” Hurley said. “After that, everyone panicked.”

He said Robb was still pointing the gun at Lopez when he told him to leave the room.

“But (Lopez) wasn’t sure he wasn’t going to shoot him again,” Hurley said.

Lopez finally ran out the room, stumbling as he went.

“We were screaming and crying, and half of the boys were getting sick from seeing all the blood,” Rodriguez said.

Student Matt Grimsley said the girls were on one side of the room “all panicked out.”

Robb then allowed the girls to leave the room, but at least one girl stayed, they said. Robb then used the telephone to call his mother.

“He told her he’d held up a class,” Hurley said. “He told her he’d let most of the class out already. He was wanting his (step)dad to come down here.”

The students in the class said Robb remained calm during the entire episode, even while he was talking on the telephone with police hostage negotiators, they were to learn later.

When he was led away by police, Robb wore a red flannel shirt, jeans and a T-shirt. But students throughout the day said he was dressed in full army fatigues, a trench coat or just a fatigue jacket, and their conflicting stories and descriptions reflected the frenzy that spread throughout the school as it tried to recover from a tense drama.

Hearsay had become legend by the end of the day. Hours after the school day ended, Rodriguez said students were still talking back and forth on the telephone about the episode in drama class.

“Everybody agreed to go to the game tonight, just so we can all get our minds off what happened today,” she said.