Student, 13, Is Arrested for Threats With Pistol

A junior high school student in Mira Mesa was arrested after attempting to avenge a summer school classroom fight with a .22-caliber pistol.

The 13-year-old boy brandished the gun in front of his first-period teacher Thursday. He allowed her to take students to another classroom before he strode through a courtyard and pointed the loaded and cocked pistol at another seventh-grader. Police did not identify either student at Julius Wangenheim Junior High School.

While the armed boy shouted threats, three older students intervened, said San Diego Police Officer David Kersch, a member of the school task force. One grabbed the gun and wedged his finger in front of the hammer to prevent it from firing. Two others held the boy until the older student wrested the weapon away.

Before school district police could be summoned, the threats, the standoff and the acts of heroism were over, Kersch said. No one was injured.

The incident grew out of two earlier ones, Principal Del Evans said.

Earlier in the week, the second youth tripped the arrested boy as he walked into a summer school class they had attended for four weeks, authorities said. A brief scuffle followed in which the second youth was slapped around.

The animosities smoldered until Wednesday, when the second youth gathered about 10 friends when school let out. Fearing the group, the first boy fled and returned the next morning with a pistol belonging to an adult relative, Evans said.

After interviewing both youths, Kersch said: “The boy (who was later arrested) thought he was going to be ambushed by the second kid and 10 older friends. The first boy thinks: ‘They are going to kick my butt.’ He doesn’t like the odds, so he goes home and gets an equalizer.”

The boy faces a felony charge of possessing a firearm on campus and a misdemeanor charge of displaying a gun in a threatening manner, Kersch said. He was released into the custody of his mother.

The family is from the Hilltop area. During the school year the youth attends Pershing Junior High School, authorities said.

In recent years, San Diego city schools have seen an increase in assaults by students and confiscation of weapons.

In 1991, 355 assaults were reported, 46.7% more than the previous year. School officials confiscated 143 weapons, up from 126 the year before. The increases were the largest in more than a decade, according to district records.

Authorities said the arrested youth had no record of disciplinary action.

“He was just a very frustrated kid,” Evans said, “who thought he could solve his problems by having a gun at school.”