Troubling Portrait of Suspect in Slaying : Reseda High: Officials say Robert Heard is a vandal with a criminal record. He allegedly tried to rob another student at gunpoint as he fled.

Robert Heard, alleged killer of a classmate at Reseda High School, is a graffiti vandal with a criminal record who tried to hold up another student at gunpoint even while fleeing the killing scene, authorities said Tuesday.

Heard, 15, was arrested Monday in the death of 17-year-old Michael Shean Ensley, who was shot after the two apparently argued in a school hallway about their rival graffiti “tagging crews,” authorities said.

At an arraignment scheduled for today in Sylmar Juvenile Court, Heard will be charged not only with murder and having a gun on campus, but also attempted robbery and assault with a firearm for allegedly trying to rob the second youth.

“It’s crazy, just crazy,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Bill Ryder, who is handling the case in juvenile court. “Maybe he was trying to get money to get out of town or something. He pointed a gun, made a demand for money and continued fleeing.”

When the student balked, Heard opened the small-caliber pistol to prove that it was loaded, but after the student produced only $1 and change, Heard continued fleeing to a nearby shop, where he bought a raspberry doughnut, authorities said.

In the wake of the midmorning shooting that sent shock waves through the nation’s second-largest school system Monday, other students described Heard as a gregarious teen-ager who was an above-average defensive back on the high school football team and had been transferred between schools at least once because of minor run-ins with school officials.

But on Tuesday, authorities said there was a troublesome side to the Panorama City teen-ager: “Suffice it to say this guy has been active and he’s been a problem not only for the schools but for the police as well,” said Detective Joel Price of the Los Angeles Police Department, who is handling the case. “He does have a criminal record, but as far as what’s on it, I can’t tell you.”

Price and other authorities said that despite statements from Ensley’s family that he was an innocent boy caught up in gang warfare, the shooting victim was a tagger who spray-painted walls around the San Fernando Valley with the symbol of his “crew.”

Price discounted statements that Heard allegedly made to police in which he said he shot and killed Ensley as a “pay-back” for the January shooting death of 12-year-old Tiffany Dozier as she stood outside a dance at the Boys & Girls Club of San Fernando Valley. Several detectives said they were investigating statements by Heard that Dozier was a cousin, but Price said the Dozier killing had nothing to do with Monday’s shooting, even if Dozier and Heard were related.

“This is not a pay-back for the Tiffany Dozier shooting, nor is there any indication of a pay-back,” Price said. “These guys just got into an argument about their crews. It was a heated exchange with a lot of expletives.”

The dead girl’s uncle, Lon Dozier, 35, said he knew of no cousin named Heard.

Latacha Meno, a 17-year-old senior at Reseda High who described herself as one of Tiffany’s best friends, also disputed the pay-back theory. “I know nothing about that being involved with it,” Meno said.

A 16-year-old friend and neighbor of Heard, who asked that her name not be used, said that in late December or early January, Heard stopped going home to the apartment he shared with his parents in Panorama City. She did not know where he was living.

“It’s weird. . . . He just left and turned into somebody different out in the streets,” she said. Before leaving home, she said, “he was the quiet type of guy who if nobody got him mad he would just leave them alone.”

Meanwhile, anxiety and grief pervaded the sprawling campus Tuesday.

About 530 of the 2,000-member student body failed to show up, although school officials said that about 400 usually stay home on days as rainy as it was Tuesday. About a dozen who did make it to class Tuesday left by midmorning, too caught up in the tension to remain.

Three or four teen-agers told school officials they feared they would be targets of retribution following Ensley’s shooting, Vice Principal Dimitri Vadetsky said.

“All I can do is tell them we can protect them as best we can on campus,” Vadetsky said.

Police officers assigned to patrol Valley schools concentrated on the streets around Reseda High. Three school police officers, in addition to the school’s regularly assigned officer, mingled among the students. An administrator made spot checks, asking some students to unzip their jackets and empty their pockets.

The Los Angeles school district sought to minimize the emotional damage, sending out a crisis team of about 45 psychologists and counselors to talk with students in their second-period classes, giving them the facts known about the case and trying to quell rumors.

Hundreds of students took advantage of additional individual and group counseling sessions that ran throughout the day. They are expected to continue today. The school also has scheduled a meeting with parents Thursday night.

Laura Rhone, an Encino parent who escorted her son Kevin onto campus Tuesday morning, attended the psychologists’ briefing in the school library. Her son saw Ensley fall and “had trouble sleeping last night,” she said.

Alnita Dunn, a member of the crisis team, said she spoke to many youngsters Monday after the incident and was confronted by emotions that ranged from grief to anger to guilt. Some students said they knew Heard toted a gun on campus.

“They’re feeling extremely guilty. Now they have to live with” the question of whether the tragedy could have been prevented had they reported the gun to school officials, she said.

Indeed, one of the messages school officials stressed most strongly Tuesday, Vadetsky said, was that students should notify teachers or administrators if they know a classmate is carrying a gun.

“I heard after the shooting that apparently a couple kids knew the kid had a gun,” Vadetsky said. “We’re trying to emphasize that this code of silence cost someone a life yesterday and it should not have happened.”

In response to the Reseda High School shooting and an earlier shooting at Fairfax High, City Councilwoman Joy Picus introduced a measure Tuesday that would provide a $250 reward to any student who turns in a gun to officials or provides information that leads to the confiscation of a gun from another student.

The program would be financed with $15,000 from the city’s General Fund but administered by the school district through an already established hot line. The idea for the program, Picus said, came from Dan Isaacs, assistant superintendent for secondary schools.

Authorities and school officials remained reluctant to talk about Heard and his criminal record, citing confidentiality laws regarding juveniles.

Jim Lutz, a Reseda High teacher who taught Heard in a special-education math class last semester, said Heard was classified as severely emotionally disturbed. That normally means a student has behavioral problems, Lutz said.

But Lutz said he enjoyed joking with Heard, who had perfect attendance at school last semester. But he attended only one day of the current semester, which started a week ago, Lutz said.

“We got along really well. If he felt he was being dealt with unfairly or being picked on, he would talk back and raise his voice. But there was nothing violent about him. I was shocked.”

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Henry Chu, Andrea Ford, Julie Tamaki and Jim Herron Zamora.

SAFETY REPORT: District shelved proposals for averting violence. B1