2 Football Players Wounded in Latest Ventura County Violence : Shooting: Bullets start flying during after-school fight. One Westlake High student is in stable condition after being hit in the head.

Two Westlake High football players were wounded Thursday in a shooting on a Thousand Oaks street corner as animosity between teen-age rivals led to after-school bloodshed for the second time this week in eastern Ventura County.

Juniors David Behling and Scott Smith were shot at noon just outside North Ranch Park, where they and a dozen friends had converged to watch a fistfight expected to take place between two other Westlake High students. Behling was wounded in the head and remained hospitalized in stable condition Thursday, while Smith, who was shot in the shoulder, was treated and released from the hospital.

What had been planned as a one-on-one punching match between junior Curtis Simmons and a rival swiftly turned into mayhem, witnesses said.

Simmons’ antagonist arrived at the North Ranch Park with a group of older friends, who began hitting the opponent with pieces of wood, witnesses said. When Simmons fled, one of his adversaries opened fire with a small handgun, spraying half a dozen bullets into a knot of frightened onlookers, witnesses said.

“It was shocking. It was stunning. I can’t believe it,” football player Mike Priebe said.

Behling, who was shot in the base of the skull, was being held for observation at Westlake Medical Center in Westlake Village. Doctors said the bullet smashed his neck and fractured his skull behind the left ear. They removed the bullet and were monitoring the youth for possible infection.

Smith was struck in the right shoulder by a bullet and crouched on the pavement to comfort the more seriously wounded Behling. Smith was treated in the hospital’s emergency room and released Thursday afternoon.

Deputies had made no arrests by late Thursday, although they were interviewing dozens of witnesses.

Sheriff’s Cmdr. Kathy Kemp said detectives had not determined whether the incident was gang-related. Friends of the victims said the fight was the culmination of a long-running feud between Simmons and the other youth.

Coming just two days after the fatal stabbing of a ninth-grader outside a Simi Valley junior high, the incident was a reminder that even campuses in the nation’s safest cities can foster bloody rivalries.

“Westlake’s a little paradise here, but you’re not immune anywhere,” said Dr. Frank Gillingham, director of the Westlake emergency room. “All this stuff is pretty foreign to Westlake, but we know it’s coming. We don’t have our heads stuck in the sand. When you have children, you think you will move farther out (from the city). But eventually there will be no place to go.”

Meanwhile, Ventura County prosecutors charged a 13-year-old junior high student with murder in connection with the death of Chad Hubbard, the 14-year-old Simi Valley boy who was fatally stabbed as he boarded a bus home from school Tuesday.

The youth, also from Simi Valley, was charged with murder and will be arraigned in Juvenile Court this morning. Friends say the stabbing was the culmination of a months-long dispute between the two boys.

Because he younger than 16, the youth cannot be tried as an adult. If found guilty, he can be detained by the California Youth Authority until he is 21.