Students Sift Feelings in Wake of Hostage Ordeal

Students at Loara High School in Anaheim, aided by psychologists and counselors, began restoring a sense of normalcy to their lives Friday, a day after an armed ninth-grader held a drama class hostage for about 40 minutes and shot and wounded one student.

“This is the first time many of the kids had been brought to this point of fear,” said school psychologist Pam Moulton. “They thought it was a joke and then it became reality.”

Moulton and four other psychologists were at the high school Friday, conducting group and private sessions to help students deal with the aftermath of Thursday’s shooting, a school district spokesman said.

The student wounded in the incident, 15-year-old Anthony Lopez was discharged Friday evening from UCI Medical Center in Orange after being shot in the left side of his face with a .22-caliber bullet, a hospital spokeswoman said. His jaw is shattered and the bullet is lodged in his neck. Anthony will return to the hospital for further treatment, the spokeswoman said.

Anthony was shot by Cordell (Cory) Robb, also 15, during a second-period drama class in the school’s choir room.

Cory, who was not enrolled in the drama class, walked into the room shortly before 9:30 a.m. with a short-barreled shotgun beneath a trench coat and a .22-caliber Beretta handgun, eyewitnesses said. He ordered the teacher out at gunpoint and spoke freely with the students, telling them he wanted to get even with his stepfather. The armed youth allegedly shot Anthony when he told Cory he didn’t believe the gun was real.

Cory allowed the wounded teen-ager and most the female students to leave the choir room, but held the rest of the class hostage until 10:10 a.m., when he surrendered to Anaheim police officers waiting outside the door.

Cory, who police say was despondent over family problems, is in Orange County Juvenile Hall in the Orange, where he will remain until Juvenile Court considers the charges recommended by Anaheim police. Those include attempted murder, aggravated assault and false imprisonment, Anaheim Police Lt. Marc Hedgpeth said.

Juvenile Court proceedings are not public.

The weapons found in Cory’s possession belong to his parents, Hedgpeth said.

Cory’s mother, Katherine Y. McAfee, and stepfather, Paul D. McAfee, were unavailable for comment Friday.

Cory’s father, Ronald Eugene Robb, a former Marine and Vietnam veteran, reportedly committed suicide. Cory told many of his friends that the suicide occurred in his presence, but none of the details surrounding his father’s death could be confirmed Friday.

Several students who have known Cory for years said he complained of frequent arguments with his stepfather, and in recent days even spoke of shooting him. Students also said that Cory had compiled a list of classmates he disliked and wanted to kill, and had threatened to do what he did Thursday.

“We’re assuming the kids are telling the truth,” Hedgpeth said. “But there’s nothing to indicate that anyone passed that on to anyone in authority--counselors, teachers, police or parents.”

Hedgpeth said the fact that so many students knew of Cory’s threats without it being known to teachers was not really that surprising.

“All the people who heard him say these things, they just thought it was boasting, idle threats,” Hedgpeth said. “I honestly believe that any of those kids who thought he was remotely capable of something like this, I think they would have said something to someone.”

School psychologist Moulton said that adolescents often maintain “an incredible code of silence” among themselves. “Kids won’t confide in an adult unless they feel a bond with them, and it takes a long time to build that bond,” Moulton said.

Students from the second-period drama class were divided into groups Friday to discuss the hostage situation. One group included students who remained in the room the whole time. The other group included those students who were released, she said.

Each group went over the events in detail to discuss what went wrong.

Moulton said many of the students still harbor a lot of “residual guilt” about the incident, wondering what they could have done to prevent it.

“I think the students have learned to become a lot more sensitive to what their peers are saying,” she said.

Parents were also seeking guidance Friday. Moulton said psychologists were advising them to sit down as families and talk through the hostage ordeal again, and not to be surprised if their kids wake up crying or show other emotional scars for awhile.