Student Stabbed at Buena High School : Violence: The attack occurs in front of dozens of students. A suspect is arrested later at a nearby shopping center. Officials say the incident is not gang-related.

A Buena High School football player was stabbed in the chest Wednesday during a fight in the student parking lot, a day after the Ventura school board decided not to hire armed security guards to patrol its high schools.

Police said a 17-year-old student confronted Jeremy Addison in the Ventura school’s parking lot during the lunch hour and stabbed him in full view of dozens of students.

The assailant was immediately tackled by a group of football players and beaten before fleeing the scene, witnesses said. The youth, whose name was withheld because of his age, was later arrested at a nearby shopping center.

Addison, 18, suffered a collapsed lung but was in serious but stable condition and recuperating Wednesday evening at Ventura County Medical Center. “I feel pretty cruddy,” he said.

Police and school officials, who have been under pressure from the community to step up their anti-gang efforts in the wake of last month’s fatal stabbing of a Ventura High student, were quick to say that the incident was not gang-related.

“There are gangs and there is violence, and we are treating this as an incidence of violence,” Sgt. Brent Johnson said.

Principal Jaime Castellanos agreed. “This had nothing to do with gangs whatsoever,” he said. “It was two individuals who made some poor decisions.”

Castellanos said the students were caught fighting on campus Monday and were suspended. He said Addison was allowed back to school Wednesday, and the other student was not supposed to return until today.

“He came onto campus unauthorized,” Castellanos said.

Addison, in an interview from his hospital bed Wednesday, said he was leaving campus for lunch about 12:30 p.m. when he saw the other boy in the parking lot. He said the student had hit him Monday and ran off.

“I saw him and I went up to him to settle it,” said Addison, an honor student. “We got in a little fight, and he pulled a knife and stabbed me in the side.

“It was real strange,” Addison said. “It’s the first real fight I’ve ever been in and just my luck I get stabbed.”

Brett Phillips, 16, a friend of Addison and one of this teammates, witnessed the fight.

“Jeremy saw the guy and walked up to him and they started fighting, and then all of a sudden the guy ran away and Jeremy started to run after him,” Phillips said.

“Then he stopped and said, ‘Oh, my God, he stabbed me,’ ” Brett said. “So I lifted up his shirt and saw the gushing blood. It was shooting out pretty bad. So I ran and called 911.”

Addison said he and his assailant had tussled repeatedly since the beginning of the year. “We just never got along,” he said.

Once, Addison said, he was walking down the hallway at school with his girlfriend and the other student “knocked into her real hard and almost knocked her down.”

Addison said he didn’t fight back at the time but “that made me real mad, and so things just got worse.”

Varsity football coach Rick Scott described Addison as a “pretty sharp kid, who has a 3.8 grade-point average and takes honor classes.” He said Addison is an inside linebacker on the football team in charge of calling defensive plays.

“He’s a good, clean-cut kid who’s got a good direction in his life,” Scott said. “It’s a shame this happened to him.”

Ventura Unified School District officials were in shock over Wednesday’s incident.

“This is madness,” Supt. Joseph Spirito said. “We’ve got to make a plea to the community to help us. Enough is enough.”

Earlier this week, the district imposed a series of security measures at Ventura High in an effort to curb gang activities after the fatal stabbing of Jesse Strobel on Jan. 29 in what police believe was a gang-related attack. The slaying occurred off campus.

In response to an outpouring of community concern, the district closed a section of Poli Street, which divides the Ventura High campus, to lessen the chance of drive-by shootings. Also, a new dress code was instituted banning hats and other headgear, and all off-campus lunch passes were revoked.

On Tuesday night, more than 100 parents, teachers and students packed the school board meeting to voice their concerns on the new safety measures, though many said they thought that the measures were excessive.

Afterward, the board decided to drop plans to hire uniformed security officers to patrol Ventura, Buena and Pacific high schools.

Spirito and board President John Walker said they preferred to establish an anti-gang and drug-prevention program at each of the high schools. They said they would like to hire a police officer to visit the schools regularly and counsel students about gangs and other issues of concern.

Despite Wednesday’s incident, Spirito and Walker said they still favor the counseling program over hiring security guards.

“Even if we had security guards, something can happen on any corner of a school campus,” Spirito said.

Several Buena High students who witnessed Wednesday’s stabbing agreed with the superintendent.

“This was an isolated incident,” said Keith Burchstead, 16. “It happens everywhere you go. It happens out of school and it happens in school, you can’t really stop it.”

Still, Spirito said he wants to hire more campus aides to help supervise the high schools. Ventura now employs four aides and Buena three. Pacific High, the district’s continuation school, has none.

The campus aides, who are paid by the hour, carry walkie-talkies and patrol the school grounds throughout the day. Their job is mainly to ensure that students do not leave campus when they are not supposed to and to keep out those who are not authorized to be there.

Walker said more actions might need to be taken at Buena High--possibly including canceling off-campus lunch passes--but that school officials need to gather more information on Wednesday’s incident.

“I was floored,” Walker said after learning of the stabbing. “I can’t believe these calamities. I wish we could do something magical to correct the problem. It’s getting so bad, it’s frightening to me.”

The stabbing was only the latest in a series of incidents involving weapons at schools across the county.

Also Wednesday, two students at Los Cerritos Intermediate School in Thousand Oaks were arrested for possession of a sawed-off shotgun, which authorities found in a student’s locker.

And in Camarillo, the father of a 14-year-old boy expelled from Camarillo High School for having a knife on campus filed suit to get his son back in school, saying the boy was never warned not to have the weapon at school.

On Feb. 19, three Rio Mesa High School students in Oxnard were arrested for possessing a loaded firearm on campus.

And on Feb. 17, two Oxnard youths, one armed with a .25-caliber pistol, walked onto the Ventura High campus after school and confronted a group of students.

At one point, the 15-year-old put the pistol to the head of one of the Ventura High students before firing two shots into the air, police said. The youth was later arrested on charges of assault, discharging a firearm negligently and possessing a firearm on school grounds.

In Moorpark, a ninth-grade girl at Moorpark High School is facing expulsion for bringing a 10-inch kitchen knife to school Feb. 5.

Earlier this month, two Buena High school students were expelled--one for pulling a knife on a student off campus and another for having a knife in his locker.

But Castellanos, who has been principal at the school for two years, said Wednesday’s incident was the first time a student has actually used a weapon on a classmate.

“This raises my concern that there are other weapons out there,” he said. “But short of using metal-detecting devices to search every kid, which I’m not sure is the answer, this is the reality of what we’re dealing with in schools nowadays.”

Times correspondents James Maiella Jr., Patrick McCartney, Barbara Murphy and Brenda Day contributed to this story.