Youth, 14, Held in Chatsworth High Shooting

Police Tuesday arrested a 14-year-old Sylmar boy who officers said confessed to shooting a Chatsworth High School student for his backpack. A 17-year-old Lake View Terrace youth also was arrested as a suspected accomplice.

The younger boy admitted he was the gunman who got out of a white BMW on Dec. 15 and shot Gabriel Gettleson, 17, while Gettleson waited for his mother to pick him up outside school, police said.

“He admitted to the shooting,” said Officer Don Cox, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman.

Gettleson remained hospitalized Tuesday at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, where administrators said he was in serious condition with a bullet still lodged near his spine.

The shooting rekindled fears of campus violence that earlier this year led the Los Angeles Unified School District to impose daily weapons searches at all 49 high schools.

Police would not release details of Tuesday’s arrests, noting that both suspects are juveniles, other than to say the suspected assailant was arrested at his home.

“The boy is out of control,” said one LAPD officer with knowledge of the case. “It’s ridiculous.”

The 17-year-old Lake View Terrace youth, arrested for allegedly participating in robberies “incidental” to the shooting, also admitted being involved in the incident, police said.

It was not known if Gettleson knew his attackers, and police would not comment on that point.

Tuesday’s arrests brought to three the number of youths in custody in connection with the Dec. 15 shooting, and the investigation is continuing. A 17-year-old Burbank youth was arrested Friday and accused of helping the triggerman escape after the incident.

Details of the attack began to surface Monday, when the Burbank youth described in a brief court hearing how a graffiti “tagging” crew on a wild ride robbed several people before going to Chatsworth High School and accosting Gettleson.

Police said Tuesday they have not yet identified the driver of the BMW.

During the Burbank youth’s arraignment hearing Monday, a juvenile court commissioner denied his request to be released to his mother’s custody and remanded him to juvenile hall to await a hearing on Jan. 5.

Juvenile Court Commissioner Jack Gold said the youth was a danger to himself and the community for his association with the graffiti crew. It was not known if the two suspects arrested Tuesday were members of a tagging group.

Both suspects arrested Tuesday were booked at the Devonshire area jail and will be held at Sylmar Juvenile Hall pending arraignment.

Gary Washburn, a Chatsworth community activist and a friend of the Gettlesons, said the family did not wish to comment on the arrests until more information was known.

“She’s freaked out over the whole situation,” Washburn said of Gettleson’s mother.

Washburn, a civilian liaison for the LAPD’s community-based policing efforts in the northwest Valley, said: “We’ll all breathe a little easier” with the arrests.

“It’s frightening to know there were people on the street that would shoot someone over a book bag. That mentality is difficult to comprehend,” said Washburn, who happened to be in the vicinity of Chatsworth High just after the shooting.

Gettleson was shot about 1:40 p.m. Wednesday as he stood at the northwest corner of Lurline Avenue and Vintage Street. The youths got out of the car, approached him and at least one tried to grab his backpack, police said. When Gettleson resisted, he was shot in the left hip, left shoulder and chest.

About 10 minutes after the attack, police arrested five teen-agers whom witnesses saw leave the shooting area in a blue Jeep Cherokee that had pulled up with the BMW.

Police said the gunman escaped by jumping onto the Jeep and getting a ride to the BMW, which had been driven away from the scene of the attack. Four of the five youths found in the Jeep have since been released without being charged.

Police said it was the first shooting at the school, located in a neighborhood of single-family residences. The shooting occurred about an hour before school let out for the day as Gettleson, described as a quiet, hard-working senior who played guitar for a heavy-metal band, was heading to his work-study job.