Fight With Girlfriend Sparks Melee at Chatsworth High

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-spraying campus police quelled the violence, authorities said.

No one was seriously injured in confrontations between black and Latino students that flared throughout the morning in the aftermath of the original fight. School police arrested one boy, whose name was not released, after he allegedly threatened fellow students with a metal instrument, 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 take out-of-area pupils back to their neighborhoods.

The incident began about 9:30 a.m. with a dispute between a young Latina and her boyfriend, also Latino, 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.

Although the altercation ended, it sparked racial tension that 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.

One boy 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 the boy was pushed into a thicket of bushes, she said.

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

School police and administrators were preparing for greater campus security today. Smith said she did not expect a reoccurrence.

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