250 Students Walk Out Over Firing of Guard

At least 250 Bellflower students staged a two-hour walkout Friday in protest of the firing of a popular security guard last week, school officials said.

Students complained that Keith Castruita, a security guard at the school since April, 1988, was fired because he is Latino. Castruita, who said he was fired last Thursday because he failed to appear at a basketball game he was supposed to supervise, blamed “racial policies” for his termination.

Principal Don Ashton said the decision to fire Castruita was a personnel matter that “had nothing to do with his ethnicity.” Ashton said school administrators would meet Monday with student leaders to discuss their concerns.

The students never left the campus and staged their walkout at the school football field.