Police Seek to Charge Pupil in BB Gun Incident

Los Angeles police have decided to seek charges in Juvenile Court against an 11-year-old Sylmar boy who allegedly brandished a BB gun at a classmate on campus, authorities said Tuesday.

After an interview with the youngster Tuesday morning, investigators filed a petition requesting that the Probation Department bring the case to the district attorney’s office for “prosecutorial review,” said Detective Nancy Lyon, who supervises the juvenile unit in the Police Department’s Foothill Division.

Investigators are asking that the boy be charged with exhibiting a replica of a firearm in a threatening manner. The child, whose name was withheld because of his age, was released to his parents after the interview, Lyon said.

Officials at Herrick Avenue Elementary School in Sylmar also are determining whether the sixth-grader should be expelled from the Los Angeles Unified School District under a new rule that mandates expulsion for all students caught with guns on campus.

State law grants the campus principal first say over whether the youngster should be removed from the system before a district disciplinary committee reviews the case. However, there would have to be “truly extenuating circumstances” to cause officials to recommend against expulsion under the new policy, said Linda Wilson of the district’s student discipline proceedings office.

If the boy is expelled, he would be the youngest student ever to be ejected from the district for bringing a gun to school.

According to police and school authorities, the boy aimed the unloaded, inoperative BB gun at a classmate last Friday morning and threatened to kill her and her family if she tattled on him. The girl notified the teacher, who removed the BB gun--described by police as a close replica of a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol. The boy was escorted to the principal’s office, suspended from school for five days and arrested by district police.

The incident came four days after the second of two student slayings that have occurred on district campuses in the last two months. The Jan. 21 shooting death at Fairfax High School prompted the Board of Education to stiffen its weapons policy, which previously allowed students under 16 who were caught with guns to be transferred to other schools, where critics said they posed a hidden danger to others.

Since the new rule was adopted last month, 13 teen-agers have been expelled from the district for carrying guns on campus.

In another such action, the Burbank Board of Education voted Tuesday night to expel a Burbank High School student for possessing a knife with a 2 1/2-inch blade on campus. Possession of a knife with such a short blade is not an “arrestable offense, but that is indeed a violation of the education code,” said Arthur Pierce, superintendent of the Burbank Unified School District.

The student was expelled from all Burbank schools for the rest of the 1992-93 academic year. He may apply for readmission in May for the fall semester, officials said.

Times staff writer Jocelyn Y. Stewart contributed to this story.