Brawl Erupts at Chatsworth High After Altercation Between Couple

A fight between a girl and her boyfriend at Chatsworth High School on Monday mushroomed into a campuswide melee involving 40 to 50 students before Mace-wielding campus police quelled the violence, authorities said.

No one was seriously injured in the confrontations between black and Latino students that flared throughout the morning. School police arrested one boy, whose name was not released, after he allegedly threatened fellow students with a metal rod, Principal Donna Smith said.

The disruptions led administrators to dismiss the school’s 2,500 students early as alarmed parents, many of whom had heard about the fights from their children, flooded the main office with telephone calls, school officials said. Buses arrived half an hour early to transport out-of-area pupils back to their neighborhoods.

The incident began about 9:30 a.m. with a dispute between a girl and her boyfriend, who witnesses said was beating the girl against a set of lockers. The fight escalated when a black youth attempted to intervene on behalf of the girl. The girl and her boyfriend are both Latino.

Although the altercation ended, tension apparently simmered until the break period, when bands of black students began facing off with their Latino peers.

“They were throwing trash cans and stuff,” said Tarsha Freeman, 15, adding that pockets of violence began to erupt in several parts of the campus.

By the time school police arrived, some 40 to 50 youths were involved, according to school officials and eyewitness accounts. Several students reported seeing teen-agers carrying weapons ranging from sticks to guns, but Smith said no guns were recovered.

“We did not see any, and nothing has happened to lead us to believe” any guns were involved, she said.

School police sprayed Mace, a tear gas spray, to break up the knots of fighting youths. The chaos was finally contained about 11 a.m., although a few more fights apparently broke out.

Los Angeles police sent six units in response to a request by school police for reinforcements, but the L.A. officers stayed off the school’s grounds, Sgt. Mike Sonntag said. A Los Angeles police helicopter also scanned the scene from the air.

Although no serious injuries were reported, one boy apparently suffered a puncture wound in the back, Smith said. It was unclear, however, whether the boy was stabbed with a pen or pencil by another teen-ager--as some students reported--or whether he was pushed into a thicket of bushes, she said.

Students were sent back to their classrooms after the commotion died down and kept in class for another two hours before being sent home. At least 15 youths filed into the school nurse’s office because their eyes had been irritated by Mace.

“I had Mace in my eyes--that’s why I’m mad,” sophomore Freeman said. “Instead of getting the people fighting, they sprayed us.”

Some parents and students complained that school police mostly targeted blacks with the Mace, but Smith said using the spray was “procedure” in such large-scale incidents and that the spray was directed wherever there was fighting. The chaos made it inevitable that students on the peripheries would be affected, she said.

School police and administrators were busy Monday afternoon preparing for greater campus security Monday night and today. Smith said she was surprised by Monday’s melee and did not expect a recurrence.

“It’s basically a neutral kind of school,” she said. “There’s not usually a lot of tension here.”

“This is one of the most relaxed high schools in the district,” said science teacher Don Chorzempa, who has taught at Chatsworth for eight years. “There’s not even a fence” around the campus, whose student body is 44% white and 56% minority.

But sophomore Amy Banks, 14, said Monday’s fighting left her unnerved.

“I refused to go to class because I was hysterical,” she said. “I went to the psychiatrist at the school because I was so upset. I couldn’t take it.

“I don’t want to go to this school anymore.”