Boy Charged in Teacher’s Poisoning : Crime: The Littlerock High student faces one felony count. His conviction could bring up to eight years in a detention center.

Prosecutors filed a felony charge Thursday against a 15-year-old Littlerock High School student accused of poisoning his English teacher by putting four to five drops of toxic cleaning fluid in her Diet Pepsi.

The boy, whose name is being withheld because of his age, faces a single count of poisoning or adulterating a food or drink, authorities said. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of five years in a juvenile detention center and an additional three years if it is determined the act caused the victim, Susan Ennis, great bodily harm.

The boy is scheduled to be arraigned today in Sylmar juvenile court, according to the Los Angeles district attorney’s office.

Ennis, 32, was rushed to the hospital last week after she took a gulp from a can of soda laced with dry-eraser fluid, prompting her to become violently ill. She was discharged from Palmdale Hospital Medical Center on Tuesday afternoon in stable condition.

Sheriff’s deputies arrested her alleged assailant after students overheard him boasting that he had placed cleaning fluid in the soda can as a joke, Sheriff’s Sgt. Jerry Wolf said. The boy confessed to detectives during an interview that he had committed the act.

Reaction to the boy’s arrest was mixed at the Antelope Valley campus, where several students, interviewed as they left school Wednesday, said they were surprised to learn which of their peers had been connected to the poisoning.

News of the arrest, however, came as no surprise to Pablo Vega, who said he was in Ennis’ second-period English class when the incident took place.

“Him (the student) and that teacher (Ennis) didn’t get along,” Vega said.

One school official described the boy as “a loner,” but also as “spontaneous” and as “an attention getter.”

The youth was known to walk through the school cafeteria clapping his hands loudly in the air, said Bob Girolamo, superintendent of Antelope Valley Union High School District.

“He was somewhat of a kid who was just on his own,” Girolamo said.

It remains unknown when Ennis, who is recovering at home, will return to school. Jim Gardner, president of the Antelope Valley Teacher’s Assn., said that Ennis’ doctor has recommended that she not return to her classroom for the rest of the school year, which ends June 15.

Gardner said he told Ennis during a phone conversation this week that if she does choose to return she should consider having a special teacher’s aide or security guard assigned to her classroom. He said he posed the suggestion out of concern that Ennis may face retaliation by friends of the accused boy, who has been suspended from school.

Girolamo said as a result of the poisoning, he is encouraging teachers throughout his district not to allow eating or drinking inside classrooms.