2 Teens Injured in Shooting Rampage : Violence: The victims are innocent bystanders, caught in gunfire that was prompted by a gang-related dispute, police say. Four youths are held in the incident, which took place near an Irvine high school.

A group of youths fired on teen-agers in a parking lot near a high school Thursday, wounding two bystanders in a fusillade of bullets that police said was prompted by a gang-related dispute over money.

Glenn Edwards, 18, a former Woodbridge High School football star who now attends Saddleback College, was shot in the left foot. Another victim, Brandon Woodruff, 17, was shot in the face. Woodruff attends the nearby SELF Alternative School. Both were treated at local hospitals.

Police said two carloads of Asian-American teen-agers were intending their shots for an unidentified gang affiliate who has been feuding with them over money, but the shots missed and struck Edwards and Woodruff instead.

The 1 p.m. confrontation in the 4200 block of Barranca Parkway near Culver Drive sent panicked youths dashing into a pizza parlor for safety as more than two dozen shots were fired in the parking lot. Stray bullets punctured tires and shattered windows of cars parked nearby.

Within seconds of the shooting, cars screeched out of the lot. Police stopped several vehicles and interviewed the drivers and passengers, as well as more than a dozen witnesses at the scene. By 9 p.m., police had detained or arrested four teen-age boys and impounded one car as evidence. Two of the suspects were taken to Orange County Juvenile Hall. Irvine Police Lt. Vic Thies said at least two handguns were used. Police had been told that one of the assailants used an Uzi-type submachine gun, but little evidence turned up to substantiate that.

Thies said he believes the shooting was gang-related and was a planned face-off rather than a spontaneous eruption of violence. He said the two victims “appear to be innocent bystanders.”

Edwards was taken to Irvine Medical Center, where he was treated and released. Woodruff was taken to Western Medical Center-Santa Ana, where his condition was not released. However, authorities said his wound was not life threatening.

Thies said that the suspects and their intended victim had been engaged in “an ongoing confrontation over money.” They exchanged angry words over the matter on Wednesday outside Lamppost Pizza and agreed to return on Thursday, he said.

Witnesses told The Times they had heard similar reports.

“I heard that it came out of an altercation (Wednesday), which involved a ‘meet-me-here-tomorrow’ kind of thing,” said Mike Stewart, 28, a Lamppost Pizza employee who was working when the shooting occurred.

Thies said that the suspects pulled up to the pizza parlor in two cars and engaged in a verbal exchange with their intended victim. The young men then stepped out of their cars, pulled out several guns and began shooting. They got back into the cars and sped away, firing as they went, Thies said. One man was reported to be firing shots back at the fleeing cars, Thies said.

Police said they would post uniformed, plainclothes and undercover police officers on the SELF campus and at nearby Woodbridge High today.

Stewart said he was behind the counter when he saw an ethnically mixed group of about 20 young people through the window, some of whom were yelling and readying themselves for a fight. Stewart said that when he went out to try to break it up, he saw an Asian male in his late teens taunting one of the youths.

“He took a stance with his arms apart signaling someone to fight him,” Stewart said. “Then, the Asian guy pulled out a handgun and started firing.”

Stewart turned and ran for the phone to call police.

A Woodbridge student, who asked that only his first name, Nathan, be used, said he was in the pizza parlor when he heard gunfire. Looking out the window, he saw four young Asian-American men in a dark vehicle firing across the parking lot.

Deliveryman Joe Rodriguez had just dropped off paper goods at another store in the strip mall across the street from SELF when his truck was hit by gunfire. His passenger-side window was blown into pieces.

“I realize how close I was, how I could have gotten shot,” he said. “It makes you realize how lucky you are. It still gives me the shakes when I look inside the truck and there is a bullet lying right at the foot of the door.”

Woodruff, who was shot in the face, managed to climb over an eight-foot wall at the north side of the campus and make his way back into the school. Len Casey, the principal, said the teen-ager suffered what seemed to be a “flesh wound,” with the bullet entering below the eye and exiting the side of his head.

Just as the school day was ending at 1:05 p.m., a student rushed into Casey’s office and breathlessly told him someone had been shot outside Lamppost Pizza, which is within a few hundred feet of the school. Casey dialed 911.

Casey said that in his 17 years at the school, none of his students have been involved in a shooting. About 200 students attend the school, which is designed to handle students who are not doing well academically in more traditional school settings.

Irvine Unified School District Supt. David E. Brown said counselors would be dispatched today to talk with students at Woodbridge High School, which is just across a creek channel from where the shooting occurred, and to SELF, which stands for Secondary Education Learning Facility.

Paul Mills, director of alternative education for Irvine Unified, said students at SELF, some of whom saw their schoolmate stumble onto the grounds wounded, were “upset and emotional. . . . A lot of them had fear and anxiety.”

The shooting sent a ripple of shock through Irvine, a city known more for its urban planning and its university than for crime.

“I can’t believe anything like this has happened,” said Tim McIntire, 15, who attends Woodbridge. Things like this don’t go on around here. I was shocked.”

Irvine Unified School District has seen a rise in incidents in which students brandish real or fake guns, Brown said, but Thursday’s shooting was the first in memory in which real weapons were actually fired.

On two occasions this school year, students have waved BB guns or fake guns in the parking lots of Irvine and University high schools, Brown said. Three years ago, a student brandished a shotgun in the parking lot of University High, but no shots were fired. All three students involved in those incidents have been or are being expelled, Brown said.

Prompted by the two incidents this year, Brown said that he and the Irvine police chief have just completed a letter that will soon be mailed to families, urging them to discuss with their children the gravity of carrying even a fake gun.

“We are very concerned that an officer could use a weapon against someone who points a BB gun at him,” Brown said.

In the wake of Thursday’s shooting, district officials will re-evaluate their security practices--even though they added additional security duties for classified employees at the high schools this year--and their policy allowing students to go off-campus for lunch, Brown said. But, he added: “I wouldn’t want to suggest that because of this experience, we have to build fences around schools and prevent students from leaving.”

Times staff writer David A. Avila and correspondents Debra Cano and Shelby Grad contributed to this report.