High School Football Star Stabbed to Death : Violence: A 14-year-old is held on suspicion of murder after the attack, apparently prompted by unfounded belief that the victim might steal a car. Family, Rancho Alamitos classmates are stunned.

A star running back for Rancho Alamitos High School was stabbed to death, apparently in a senseless misunderstanding over a dune buggy, and a 14-year-old was arrested on suspicion of murder, police said Wednesday.

Eighteen-year-old Moukda Chounlamany had just picked up his younger brother from a friend’s house in the 12700 block of Louise Street about 9 p.m. Tuesday when a teen-ager approached and started punching Chounlamany through his car window, the brother said.

When Chounlamany stepped out of the car he was stabbed in the chest. He crumpled to the ground in the apartment parking lot and died in the arms of a longtime friend, 18-year-old Phong Nguyen.

“When I turned to see Moukda, I didn’t see no one. I thought he got away, but then I saw him lying on the ground,” Nguyen said. “I was trying to shake him, to see if he was OK, but he just moaned.”

The 14-year-old suspect fled from the scene after stabbing Chounlamany once with a large knife but returned several hours later and turned himself over to police, Garden Grove Police Lt. John Woods said. He is being held at Orange County Juvenile Hall.

Chounlamany’s brother said the suspect had confronted him earlier, before Chounlamany arrived, punching him in the jaw for taking a long look at a parked white dune buggy.

“I just looked at it, like you look at a car, and the guy came up to me and said, ‘What were you gonna do?”’ said Tootoo Chounlamany, 15. “He thought I wanted to steal it.”

Tootoo said he and his friends were questioned by police about whether they were in fact trying to steal a car. The predominantly working-class neighborhood is the scene of frequent car thefts and burglaries, neighbors there said.

The Chounlamany family moved to the area from Laos in 1982 with five children, Tootoo said. Now, only Tootoo and his two sisters remain. His oldest brother, Bourapha Chounlamany, graduated from Rancho Alamitos High School in 1992 and was killed in a car accident returning from Riverside later that year.

Tootoo said Wednesday that his mother was “crazy” with shock and grief.

Flags flew at half-staff at Rancho Alamitos High School on Wednesday, and a team of counselors comforted crying students well into the afternoon. Hanging in the office lobby in memory of the slain student, whom everyone described as well-liked, was a painting he had entered in a districtwide art show, a brightly colored pastel rendition of Detroit Lions running back Barry Sanders.

Chounlamany’s bedroom was filled with Sanders memorabilia, his friends said, and he even carried a Sanders football card in his wallet.

Chounlamany had been urging his art teacher, Paula Reynozo, for a week to bring back the Barry Sanders picture from the show. On Tuesday night she did, and on Wednesday, not knowing, she brought it to school.

“The kids were always impressed with everything he did, and if I were to blindly pick out the most successful project, 90% of the time it would be his,” Reynozo said.

“The students are shocked,” she added. “He was so accepted and so popular and did so well at sports. He had a sharp personality, and always a smile, like there was a little secret going on with him.”

Chounlamany had plans to go to community college and possibly study engineering, counselor Gay Chapman said. He had 2.89 average and was ahead on his credits to graduate.

At the high school’s spring open house Wednesday night, officials planned to take up a collection to help the family, and the school cheerleaders and dance team plan a fund-raising bake sale for Friday, assistant principal Connie Van Luit said.

“He was fast. He was funny. He was fun to be with,” said 18-year-old Josh Bradley, a junior who ran track with Chounlamany.

Chounlamany was 5-foot-6 and weighed 150 pounds. His small size and quickness enabled him to become a standout running back for the the Rancho Alamitos High School Vaqueros varsity football team last fall.

Head coach Doug Case said Wednesday that Chounlamany was a student who “excelled both on and off the field.”

He was an unknown quantity to the coaches at the start of the season, but when the scheduled starter became injured before the first game, the teen-ager stepped in.

“He ran tough and had no fear,” assistant coach Dean Jacobs said. “He was so tough running up the middle and he was so small that he would duck behind the linemen. They liked blocking for him because he was the kind of kid who didn’t toot his own horn.”

He was the spark, his coaches said, that ignited the team and led them to the Southern Section Football Playoffs Division VII Championship last December. He was selected second team All-League for the eight-team Garden Grove league.

“We wouldn’t have gotten to the playoffs without him, that’s for sure,” Case said.

Case, who has coached football at the school for 10 years, said the stabbing has had a devastating effect on Chounlamany’s teammates.

“It’s tragic that something like this could happen to such a fine young man,” Case said. “It makes me both angry and sad.”

Chounlamany was also a sprinter for the Rancho Alamitos High School track team. He ran the 100- and 200-yard dashes and was on the relay team.

His closest friends and family milled around the Chounlamany house in Stanton on Wednesday to grapple with the murder. As they spoke of Chounlamany, a handful of robed Buddhist monks solemnly filed into the house to pray with the family.

They will preside over private funeral services this weekend, Tootoo said, and all the males who are younger than Moukda will shave their heads and eyebrows to pay their respects to him.

“He was so innocent,” Tootoo said. “I’m his younger brother and he’s way more innocent than me. The only time he wore baggy pants is when he wore my pants.

“Maybe it’s a racial thing . . . you know, Asian guys in baggy pants. Maybe another Asian guy tried to start something with him once before,” Tootoo said, pondering the suspect’s motive. “But I still don’t know why he’d want to stab my brother. He didn’t know nothing. He didn’t even hang around with the gangs.”

Middle linebacker and close friend Adam Maldonado, 18, said Chounlamany was “always trying to break up things, be the peacemaker.”

Maldonado last saw Chounlamany Monday night when he went to visit him at his house.

“He was one of the nicest guys you could ever know,” Maldonado said. “He was always there for people. He was the most forgiving person, outrageously kind, and he should rest in peace.

“We all loved him.”