Security Tightened After Bus Shooting

The school gates were padlocked, six campus security guards walked the perimeter and sheriff’s patrol cars cruised the streets surrounding Nogales High School near La Puente on Friday.

The heavy security measures came after a school bus filled with 28 students was peppered with bullets Thursday. Two girls on board were injured as the bus traveled down Faxina Avenue, just blocks from the school in an unincorporated area north of the City of Industry.

On Friday, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies said the incident grew out of a dispute between two gangs from nearby Valinda. The shooting offered dramatic proof of the increasing intrusion of gang violence from the surrounding neighborhood into the traditionally off-limits school grounds.

“I think the school is still neutral territory,” said Sharon Robison, superintendent of the 18,600-student Rowland Unified School District. “But I think it takes more work to keep it that way.”

That effort was evident Friday as teachers were pulled out of classrooms to stand watch over the campus and its 2,800 students during the lunch hour and class breaks. School psychologists were dispatched to the campus to hold one-on-one counseling sessions. Twelve of the 28 students on the bus took advantage of the service, Robison said.

Meanwhile, sheriff’s deputies, carrying copies of the school schedule and its bus routes were on alert in the surrounding neighborhoods.

Similar measures were taken at nearby Santana Continuation High School, which had 10 of its students on board the bus Thursday.

Robison said the measures will continue Monday and as long as needed.

The shooting occurred about 12:30 p.m. Thursday when words or hand signals were exchanged between students on the bus and three males riding in a maroon or red compact car, said Sgt. David Watkins of the anti-gang unit at the City of Industry sheriff’s station.

A gunman jumped out of the car, brandished a 9-millimeter handgun and fired a dozen shots as he stood in the middle of the street. Deputies said they have no suspects.

Two schoolgirls who received minor wounds when they were hit by bullet fragments Thursday did not show up for school Friday, Robison said.

But most Nogales students on Friday seemed unaffected and unimpressed by the heavy security or the shooting itself.

“They didn’t really have any reaction,” shrugged 14-year-old Robert Alejo, referring to his classmates.

Davina Gaither, 16, a sophomore who balanced a load of lunchtime soft drinks and french fries, said she was more affected by last year’s shooting when an afternoon band practice and a football game later in the day were postponed after shots were fired near the athletic field.

“I was worried last year but not this year,” Gaither said. “But I was a little freshman then.”

Senior Virginia Cunningham, 17, characterized the latest shooting as just high spirits typical of the beginning of the school year in a neighborhood filled with gangs.

“They start off being kind of rowdy,” she said. “But they really don’t do very much.”

Indeed, as if in illustration, as the school day drew to a close Friday, older youths, with tattoos on their arms and bandannas on their heads, gathered outside garages across the street from the school, apparently with nothing else to do. Their shouts and mock fights drew the attention of some students, including 16-year-old David Mercado who ignored his girlfriend as his attention was pulled across the street.

“It’s getting rougher and rougher. Every day there’s a fight, either at school or off,” he said.

Then, abruptly he said, “I got to go,” and joined some of the youths across the street as his girlfriend shouted at him to come back to the campus.