Shooting Leads to Tighter School Security : Violence: Access to Nogales High School is restricted. Male victim, 17, is in fair condition.

Security was tightened at Nogales High School after a 17-year-old boy was shot while standing on the school’s baseball field.

About 10 youths had gathered Tuesday on the field, some 300 yards from classrooms, when a shot rang out at 11:30 a.m., Principal Ronald Tyler said Wednesday.

Jerry Moreno, a student at Santana Continuation School in the same district, fell to the ground with a small-caliber gunshot wound to the chest, authorities said. The other youths scattered, some of them over a six-foot-high fence to a waiting car, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Steve Brennan said.

*

Moreno was taken to Queen of the Valley Hospital in West Covina where the bullet was removed. He was reported in fair condition Wednesday, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Tire irons were found on the athletic field, but investigators could not say whether the group of youths intended to use them as weapons in a fight. The wounded youth does not belong to any of the area’s major gangs, Brennan said.

The victim told police he was shot by a lone, black male wearing a green jacket. But no other witnesses reported seeing such a person. Investigators have no idea where the shot came from, nor do they have suspects or a motive, Brennan added.

Most of the school’s 2,744 students were inside classes when the shot was fired, Tyler said. The campus, at 401 S. Nogales Ave., has its own security guards, and access is limited via five main gates. However youths occasionally enter by jumping the fence near a drainage ditch, Tyler said.

Three of the gates will remain locked this week and the guards were notified to increase their watch over the remote field where the shooting occurred, Tyler added.

Rowland Unified School District has a strict policy banning weapons on campus, from pocketknives to box cutters, Tyler said. Students caught with weapons face suspension, or expulsion, he said.

“The irony of having people from outside come and shoot somebody is a real anomaly for our campus,” Tyler said.

“We have a very secure, very safe campus,” he added.

*

Campus security was also tightened Sept. 26, 1991, after a school bus carrying 28 students was fired upon three blocks from the high school by gang members. The shooting arose from a dispute with rival gang members on the bus. Two girls received minor wounds from bullet fragments.

For a month after that shooting, sheriff’s patrol cars drove past the campus and others followed school buses as they made their daily routes.