Felonious Tomfoolishness : Boy Spent 13 Days in Custody for Jabbing Classmates With Metal-Tip Pencil

A 13-year-old boy was arrested at school, charged with nine felony counts and locked up for almost two weeks last month because he jabbed several classmates with a metal-tipped pencil.

The boy’s relatives and a school counselor expressed outrage over the way officials handled the incident, which they say was horseplay that got out of hand. But police and school administrators, noting that two of the students were taken to a hospital to have their wounds cleaned, said strong action was warranted.

Police arrested Angel Trejo and two other boys Feb. 27 at Dr. Leroy L. Doig Intermediate School. Angel spent 13 days in Orange County Juvenile Hall while awaiting a hearing on the nine counts of assault with a deadly weapon. When released--after pleading guilty to lesser charges--he was suspended from Doig and transferred to the Garden Grove Unified district’s school for disciplinary problems.

Incidents like this were once handled at school, but many are now finding their way to Juvenile Court. Officials say such tougher attitudes about discipline--including the calling of police to campuses--reflect a changing climate in those schools where the influence of gangs has threatened campus security.

Juvenile Court Judge Robert B. Hutson, who handled Angel’s case but could not recall its details, said the jabbing incident is probably similar to hundreds of cases that come before him annually.

“Times are different,” Hutson said. “There are certain crimes on campus that once went to the principal’s office. . . . We compel people to send their most precious possessions to the four walls of our schoolhouses. The least I can do is make sure they are safe while they are there.”

One of the other two teen-agers arrested for the pencil incident faced similar criminal charges, while the third was released within hours. A fourth boy was reportedly suspended for possessing the two mechanical pencils--Pentel Quicker-Clickers. They were used by nine eighth-graders to jab each other while acting up in a science class being taught by a substitute.

Angel was released on March 10 after pleading guilty to two counts of misdemeanor battery. Hutson sentenced him to 10 hours of community service and one year of probation. It was a deal that the boy’s attorneys said was struck solely to gain a quicker release from juvenile authorities.

“He went to jail for the equivalent of putting a tack on somebody’s chair,” said Dennis McNerney, a partner at the law firm defending Angel.

But Hutson said the punishment was not out of line, and Doig Principal John Barriga agreed.

“This is something we don’t condone in our school,” Barriga said. “When there is injury inflicted on others it’s self-explanatory. The nature of this incident will never be condoned.”

However, the boy’s attorney and at least one school counselor, who knows those involved in the classroom incident, criticized the school and other authorities for a heavy-handed response.

“This started out as something funny,” said Miguel Vivanco, a district counselor who has worked with Angel. The boys “didn’t realize the seriousness of the matter. . . . I think (the criminal charges) were exaggerated; that’s my personal opinion, because I work with these kids and I know how they act. This was not a malicious thing.”

Angel said the incident began when a classmate poked him in the thigh as he read an assignment in the class. Soon, several students--including Angel--began jabbing each other with at least two of the pencils, poking each other in the arms and legs, causing small skin punctures to at least two of the students.

The pencils come with a metal pin used to clean lead shavings from the tip. Angel said the boys mounted the pin in the tip and used it to jab one other. Police said one of the pins appeared to have been sharpened.

The substitute teacher did not appear to be aware of the incident and it was not until later in the day when a boy in the class complained to administrators, that he and the others were called to the office, Angel said.

The two students who received minor punctures were taken by school officials to a local hospital to have their wounds cleaned. Police were called.

Garden Grove Police Investigator Baden Gardner, who made the decision to arrest Angel and the three others, would discuss the case only in generalities.

“You can assume that if arrests were made, all the elements of a crime were present,” Gardner said.

In several interviews, Gardner and school officials cited state privacy laws in explaining why they declined to talk about the specifics of the incident. Principal Barriga said he would not allow the boys who were jabbed to be interviewed. A friend of the Trejo family contacted The Times about the incident and the family agreed to interviews.

Angel said he was embarrassed when he was led away in handcuffs in front of the other students during the lunch break.

“I felt real dumb,” the 5-foot-1, 95-pound youngster said. “I never wanted to get arrested or end up in jail. The hardest thing was when my mom saw me at the police station.”

Within three days of his arrest, Angel appeared at a detention hearing, but the judge refused to release him pending his preliminary hearing, almost two weeks later. Juvenile Court has no cash bonds and youths who are considered a danger to society are sent to Juvenile Hall pending a hearing on the facts of their case.

It was at such a preliminary hearing on March 10 that Angel pleaded guilty to the lesser charges and was released.

It is the severity of the punishment that has angered and shocked the boy’s parents, family friends and the members of his church, some of whom wrote stirring letters to court officials attesting to his good character.

But Gardner said the two students who were charged are gang members.

“We are not going to tolerate gang members doing anything to intimidate other kids at any of our schools,” the investigator said. “Anybody who acts like a gang member . . . is a gang member.”

Angel, however, insists he is not a gang member.

He admits to having two drawings depicting gang symbols in his notebook when arrested, but he said they mean nothing.

“Because I’m (Latino) and I live in my neighborhood, people think I must be a gangster, but I’m not.”