Youth Held in Guard’s Death Was on Way Up : Violence: Virgil Jason Clarke was expected to become an ROTC cadet leader at Long Beach Poly High this fall. Friends and relatives are stunned by his arrest with 17-year-old companion.

He was a decorated ROTC cadet, with medals to his name and trophies to show for long afternoon drills at Polytechnic High School in Long Beach. He was expected to become one of only six company commanders at the school this fall, and he hoped to become an Army officer after joining up next year. But for 18-year-old Virgil Jason Clarke, those dreams have been cast aside, at least for now.

Clarke and a 17-year-old youth will be arraigned today on charges that they kidnaped and murdered Long Beach school crossing guard Catherine Tucker as she sat in her car at her post Monday morning.

The carjacking and slaying shocked Long Beach’s corps of crossing guards, which had already been on edge.

Two months ago, the union that represents them asked the city to provide two-way radios because guards were being “harassed, oftentimes by motorists and other belligerent people,” Long Beach City Councilwoman Doris Topsy-Elvord said.

At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, Topsy-Elvord asked the city manager’s office to look into the possibility of giving crossing guards radios with panic buttons.

Clarke and the other youth, whose name was not released by police because he is a juvenile, are scheduled to be arraigned in Long Beach Municipal Court on charges of murder, kidnaping and robbery. Clarke was in custody in the Long Beach Police Department jail. The juvenile, who prosecutors said may be tried as an adult, was being held at Los Padrinos Juvenile Detention Center.

Tucker, 46, was found dead in the trunk of her 1981 Pontiac Grand Prix about five hours after she was abducted near the intersection of Burnett Street and Pacific Avenue. She had been shot once in the head.

Clarke and the other youth were attending summer classes at Poly High. He was taking makeup English and world history classes, Principal H.J. Green said. Both students were entering their senior year in the fall, and Clarke, a second lieutenant with the school’s Reserve Officer Training Corps program, was slated to become commander of about 25 cadets in Delta Company, according to cadets.

Clarke also was a leading member of the school’s drill team and of an outdoor survival group known as the Raiders. He had won numerous medals and ribbons since joining ROTC in ninth grade and wore them on Thursdays, the day cadets wear their uniforms to school.

Fellow cadets said Clarke was well versed in the use and maintenance of rifles.

Friends were shocked at the news of his arrest.

“When I heard about it, I said, ‘That ain’t the Virgil I know,’ ” said Shamika Williams, 15. “He was by the books.”

Little information was available about the other youth. Clarke’s family said the two had been friends since ninth grade and cadets said that the 17-year-old had also joined ROTC but dropped out.

A witness to the 6:55 a.m. abduction said she saw two men struggling with Tucker, then driving off. The witness said she heard what sounded like a single gunshot. Tucker, a mother of seven, had just arrived for her regular morning shift. She had been the crossing guard for Lafayette Elementary School for about six years.

Police said that after the two abducted Tucker, they drove her car to school, where they attended classes for a brief time. A third youth, also 17, joined them as they left school. That youth has not been charged.

Police recovered a 22-caliber weapon which they said they believe was the murder weapon, but they have yet to receive results of a ballistics test.

Tucker’s car was found by police about noon, less than two miles from Lafayette Elementary, on Cerritos Avenue north of Wardlow Road, where the kidnapers had crashed into a parked car.

Police said it was unclear who had instigated the carjacking.

Members of the Clarke family said Clarke is innocent. They blamed his friend for drawing the weapon and pulling the trigger. They described that youth as high-strung and “ready to do something at any minute.”

Clarke’s mother, Carmella, called her son a “victim of circumstance.”

“The guy said to him, ‘I’m gonna jack this car,’ ” she said. “I said, ‘Why didn’t you leave?’ And he said, ‘I know how (the other boy) is and he would have incriminated me anyway.’

“He was with the wrong person at the wrong time,” she added. “The friend shot her and said, ‘You got to help me get rid of her.’ He went along because if he had just left, he would have been incriminated.”

Police would not confirm Carmella Clarke’s version of events.

The Clarke family lives in a three-bedroom stucco home on a tree-lined street in northern part of the city. The Clarkes’ two daughters attend Long Beach City College, and the father, Virgil Clarke Jr., is a driver for the city’s public bus system.

A woman identifying herself as the 17-year-old’s mother, but declining to give her name, would say only that her son “is a good kid. He has never brought me a moment’s grief. . . . I want to say to (Tucker’s) family that I’m very sorry about everything that has gone on. I know that’s inadequate, but I am very sorry.”

The woman lives in an apartment on Burnett Street, two blocks west of where the carjacking occurred. Tuesday, well-wishers placed bouquets of roses, condolence cards and an American flag at a makeshift memorial at the site. Poems and letters were taped to a nearby tree.

Tucker’s death was the second fatal incident in three years involving a crossing guard in the Los Angeles area.

In 1991, Juan Antonio Vela, a crossing guard for Lake Marie Elementary School in Whittier, was killed by a drunken driver as he escorted children across the city’s busy Carmenita Road.

In response to the shooting, the Long Beach Police Department’s traffic detail provided on-site counseling to the 35 crossing guards who came to work Tuesday. A Police Department security officer was working Tucker’s crosswalk.

“All of them are shocked by what’s happened, but every one of them came to work (Tuesday) morning,” said Maggy Everett, the city’s crossing guard supervisor. “Their concern is to protect the children.”

In Los Angeles, many crossing guards also were stunned by the death. Guards in Los Angeles are encouraged not to handle money in public and to be aware of people who might have “bad intentions,” said to Kaye Beechum, chief of Los Angeles’ parking enforcement department.

Arnold J. Reinen, a crossing guard at Glassell Park School in northeast Los Angeles, agreed. A guard since 1985, Reinen, 69, said it is wise to be cautious. He is stationed at 30th Avenue and Division Street in Glassell Park and heard about the shooting Monday from the portable radio he keeps clipped to the inside of his Day-Glo orange vest.

“It scares me a little,” Reinen said of the shooting. “But I’ve got to tell you this, if you check me right now, this is all the money you’ll find on me,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a handful of change and a nail clipper.