Gunshots Send 200 CSUN Party-Goers Running for Cover

A volley of gunshots fired from a semiautomatic pistol sent at least 200 students and others gathered in a dormitory parking lot at Cal State Northridge screaming and running for cover early Saturday.

No one was injured, but two of the bullets fired during an argument among three party-goers hit Southernwood Hall, one of several buildings in a student housing complex at Lassen Street and Lindley Avenue on the northern portion of the CSUN campus.

“I was praying, ‘Please Lord, don’t let me die,’ ” said Mignon Thomas, a 19-year-old student who was in the parking lot at the time of the shooting. “It scared the life out of me.”

CSUN campus police arrested a 23-year-old Pasadena man, Ferris T. Valentine, a self-employed laborer, on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, said campus police Sgt. Pat Hardy. Valentine, who is not a CSUN student, was being held in lieu of $15,630 bail Saturday at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Van Nuys Division Jail.

Police and CSUN housing officials said the shooting occurred about 1:45 a.m. after a dance sponsored by Phi Beta Sigma fraternity was shut down late Friday night because of overcrowding and fighting outside. The dance was widely advertised at area colleges, attracting scores of students and others from as far away as Long Beach.

Campus police Lt. Mark Hissong said several hundred people, many of them non-students, were turned away from the University Student Union, where the dance--the first of the semester--was being held. “There were some fights, some crowding at the door,” he said. “We decided it was best to shut down.”

Edmund Peckham, vice president of student activities, said university officials will meet Tuesday to examine problems with their plan to handle dances on campus. The procedures call for students, who are permitted to bring guests, to show university identification at the door.

“It’s a deep disappointment,” he said. “We thought we had been able to make provisions to handle a dance of this kind. . . . We’re going to study it very, very careful.

“Thank goodness no one was hurt,” Peckham said.

After campus police shut down the dance, about 200 of the more than 600 people who had shown up congregated in the parking lot outside Southernwood and Burdock halls, an area known for parties, students and police said.

The shots were fired after two Los Angeles residents, Marcus Bridges, 20, and Gregory Lamar, 21, also non-students, argued with Valentine, Hardy said.

Bridges and Lamar “said they were not sure what the problem was,” Hardy said. But several students who witnessed the altercation said the quarrel was over a young woman, apparently the girlfriend of one of the men.

During the argument, Valentine went to his car and got a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol, Hardy said. Valentine dropped the gun, then picked it up, pointed at the two men and fired two to three shots, Hardy said.

The men ducked and ran as Valentine chased them, firing an additional 10 to 12 shots, police said.

As the shots rang out, students and others screamed, ducked behind cars and ran for cover, Hissong said. “People were panicking, running desperately into the building, taking whatever cover they could,” he said.

“I just ducked behind a car and stayed there,” said Shonte Davis, 17, a freshman.

Rameen Talesh, a dorm director, said there was “mass confusion” during the shooting. “We unlocked the doors at Burdock Hall so people could come in for cover.”

Hytosha Hodges, 19, said she was inside the dorm talking to her mother on the phone when the shots were fired. “She wanted me to come home right then,” Hodges said. “It was really scary.”

She added that she feels it is unfortunate that the members of Phi Beta Sigma don’t have a house on fraternity row. “They’re really nice people. They just don’t have any money.”

Members of the fraternity could not be reached Saturday.

“It wasn’t the fraternity’s fault,” said Alex Rizzo, a 22-year-old senior who was studying in one of the dorms when he heard the shots. “It was outsiders.”

The shots also awakened nearby residents, many of whom complained to campus police. A wooden fence surrounding one yard was toppled and crushed in the stampede, police said. Edward and Jane Denton, who have lived on nearby Kinzie Street for 34 years, said parties at the dorms had been noisy before. “But we’ve never seen anything like this before,” Edward Denton said.

“It was the nearest thing to a riot I’ve seen,” said his wife, who noted that more dorms are scheduled to open in the complex this year. “Something has got to be done to protect the people.”

Edward Denton said many neighbors want permanent barricades erected at Kinzie Street and Lindley Avenue and at Superior Street and Lindley Avenue.