Westlake Student Held in Brawl in Which Three Were Shot

Ventura County sheriff’s detectives arrested a Westlake High School student on assault charges Friday in an after-school brawl that led to the shooting of three classmates who were waiting to see a one-on-one fistfight.

The 17-year-old youth from Westlake Village, one of the prospective combatants in the fistfight, was held for several hours before he was booked into the Ventura County Juvenile Hall on suspicion of assault for attacking another teen-ager during Thursday’s melee, said Sgt. David Paige. The youth’s name was withheld because of his age.

Paige stopped short of saying it was a racial or gang-motivated attack. But Sheriff’s Cmdr. Kathy Kemp confirmed witnesses’ reports that the assailants piled out of three cars and announced, “We’re the Asian Mafia,” before wading into the crowd of mostly white students. They wielded lumber and baseball bats and possessed at least one .25-caliber handgun.

The boy arrested Friday is an Asian American, deputies said. He allegedly had been about to fight a white student before the melee erupted.

Friday morning, detectives broadened their search into Los Angeles County for the assailants, Kemp said.

“I can safely say from preliminary information that these (youths) were not from Ventura County,” Kemp said.

Two students were hospitalized with bullet wounds and a third student was grazed. One of those hospitalized was released from Westlake Medical Center after being treated for a bullet wound in his shoulder.

But one classmate remained in the hospital in stable condition, the base of his skull fractured by a bullet. He is expected to fully recover and be released within a day or two, said his father, who called the boy’s survival “a miracle.”

“Kids out here are probably pretty naive,” the father said. “They still think they can have it out with their fists and it’s settled, but it just isn’t that way anymore.”

He said youngsters and community leaders must wake up to the reality of youthful violence in Thousand Oaks, which is consistently ranked among the three safest U.S. cities of its size.

“It’s here,” he said. “Anybody who thinks that we live on an island is deluding themselves.”