Simi Boy, 14, Is Slain in Stabbing at School : Violence: A Valley View Junior High schoolmate, 13, is arrested. The victim was attacked while boarding a bus for home.

A 14-year-old Simi Valley boy was stabbed to death as he was boarding a school bus for home at his junior high school Tuesday, and police quickly arrested a 13-year-old schoolmate as the suspected killer.

Ninth-grader Chad Patrick Hubbard--a popular, handsome boy who pitched for his school baseball team--was about to board the bus at Valley View Junior High School as classes ended at about 3:20 p.m., when two classmates confronted him, student witnesses told his uncle, Bob Miller.

One pulled out a knife and, with a sweep of his arm, stabbed Chad in the heart, Miller said the students told him. Chad later was pronounced dead at Simi Valley Hospital after physicians tried unsuccessfully to revive him.

Chad’s death, apparently the first slaying ever on a Simi Valley school campus, staggered school and city officials.

“Everyone is in shock, just total shock,” said Mary Beth Wolford, superintendent of the Simi Valley Unified School District, after talking to teachers about the killing.

“We’re extremely saddened by this situation, of course, and we feel that it certainly is an isolated incident,” Wolford said after district board members huddled for a closed-door briefing. “There is no trend toward this in Simi Valley.”

“This is not something that happens very often in Simi Valley,” said Mayor Greg Stratton, who learned of the slaying Tuesday afternoon in phone calls from Police Chief Lindsey Paul Miller and City Manager Lin Koester.

“We’re going to try to find out what caused it and what went on,” Stratton said. “We have the person in custody, and you can be sure that we’ll prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.”

In the hospital’s emergency room waiting area, a group of Chad’s friends and relatives consoled each other. Half a dozen teen-age boys and one girl sobbed openly, their faces twisted in sorrow.

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When Chad’s mother came out of the emergency room sobbing, they surrounded her.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do without him,” said Jackie Hubbard, a lab assistant at Amgen in Newbury Park whose husband Scott is a union drywall finisher.

“He got no say-so (in his death). He was just gone,” she said. “He was here today and now he’s gone. I don’t know what I’m going to do without my baby.”

Chad was stabbed just after school ended Tuesday, police said.

Basketball coach Chris Printz said he saw the tail end of the fight and witnessed the stabbing. Printz said he saw the 13-year-old and a friend flee the scene, chased by a group of four or five boys. The two ran into the principal’s office because they feared for their safety, he said.

Mortally wounded, Chad managed to walk to the nurse’s office at Valley View Junior High School, where he collapsed, police said.

Principal Don Gaudioso said he came upon the wounded boy as an assistant principal and a school nurse were trying to revive him.

The wound “was in the abdominal area, and it looked like it must have hit an artery,” Gaudioso said. “I think he probably just lost so much blood.”

An ambulance summoned by school officials rushed Chad to Simi Valley Adventist Hospital, police said.

“He was in full cardiac arrest upon arrival at the hospital, and the doctors were not able to bring him back,” said Lt. Dick Thomas of the Simi Valley police. Chad was pronounced dead at 4:30 p.m., police said.

Police answering the emergency call quickly arrested the 13-year-old suspect, who is being held in Ventura County Juvenile Hall on suspicion of murder. The eighth-grader is not being identified because of his age.

Gaudioso said Chad and the suspect had a history of minor disputes beginning early this school year, but educators did not believe it would escalate into violence.

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“They were just two kids that didn’t really like each other, but there was no indication there was any real problems between them,” Gaudioso said. The boys’ disagreements ranged from dirty looks to throwing a football at each other during a gym class, he said. “I don’t understand it.”

One Valley View teacher said trouble between the two began a few weeks ago when the younger boy felt Chad had insulted him in the hallway.

“I think they were probably warned to stay away from each other, and so they did until today,” said the teacher, who asked not to be named.

Chad, the oldest of four siblings, was the pitcher on Valley View’s baseball team, a member of the ninth-grade basketball team and one of the most popular kids in school, said Miller, his uncle.

“He was very easy to get along with and friends with everyone,” Miller said. “His smile would light up the room.”

Chad “was always the protector for his friends, but he wasn’t looking for a fight,” Miller added.

At 165 pounds and nearly 6 feet tall, Chad dreamed of a college baseball scholarship that could lead him to a professional career, Miller said.

“Nobody could touch him, he was the best,” Miller said. “He would have made it.”

In the hospital waiting area, several teachers and parents tried to comfort Chad’s distraught friends as they passed around a small pink box of tissues.

Some boys called friends on a pay phone. Another covered his face with a baseball cap.

Waiting for Chad’s parents, they sipped water and coffee from paper cups.

Frank DiPoma, 14, a friend of Chad’s, said he was still wearing the oversized baggy jeans and oversized purple and tan plaid flannel shirt that Chad had loaned to him on Monday.

“Yesterday I was over at his house, and now he’s gone,” Frank said. “I just can’t believe it.”

Simi Valley Unified School District officials were briefed behind closed doors Tuesday night on the stabbing.

District board member Judy Barry emerged near tears.

“You don’t think it’s going to happen in our town, but unfortunately it did,” Barry said.

Superintendent Wolford said she will meet this morning with the 1,000-student school’s entire teaching staff. She said she will arrange for counselors to be made available to meet with students and staff to help them cope with the tragedy.

“It’s just shocking,” said Peggie Noisette, a foreign language teacher at Valley View and president of the Simi Educators Assn. “I’m still numb. I don’t know what to think.”

Noisette said she had received numerous phone calls from other Valley View teachers who took news of Chad’s death hard.

“It’s terrible, it’s terrible,” she said. “It shouldn’t happen. I would hope what happens in society wouldn’t be reflected in our schools, but what happens in the world doesn’t end at our schools.”

Noisette said that from what she knows of the fight, it was apparently not gang-related. “It was evidently two people that just got into a fight with each other.”

Noisette said there have not been any gang conflicts on the Valley View campus in recent months.

Chad’s death was the first schoolyard slaying in Ventura County since Nov. 22, 1989, when Manuel (Deadeye) Rodriguez shouted gang slogans outside Channel Islands High School and was shot to death by Arnel Salagubang, a rival gang member.

Tuesday’s slaying also was the first slaying in Simi Valley in 18 months, since Jon Gregory Pearce, 39, a retired Los Angeles police officer, gunned down his estranged wife’s boyfriend on June 22, 1992, as his children watched.

Friends, relatives and teachers described Chad as a handsome, popular, athletic kid.

“He was always a polite kid, always a pleasant kid when you talked to him,” said physical education teacher Richard Gillespie, who taught Chad in seventh and eighth grades. “He didn’t always do what you asked him to, but he didn’t give you any back talk.”

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Gillespie said he heard there had been prior “friction” between Chad and the suspect. But he said it seemed out of character for the slain student to fight with others.

“I didn’t see him as an antagonistic-type kid,” Gillespie said. “I would not place him as the type of kid that would run with a gang.”

Gillespie said Chad had wanted to play freshman football this year, but didn’t have the C average needed to quality for the team.

Chad was to have played Tuesday night with the ninth-grade Valley View Vikings basketball team, and Athletic Director Jamie Kogut planned to break the news of his death to them after the game, Gillespie said.

Chad had been very popular among girls in his class because of his outgoing personality and handsome looks, said Lynn Miller, his aunt.

“He was very outgoing, well-liked, ambitious, full of energy,” Miller said. “He was worshiped by the whole family. He was a good kid.”

Times correspondents Brenda Day, James Maiella Jr., Julie Fields and Maia Davis contributed to this story.