Access to Gun in Suicide Attempt Questioned : Incident: Authorities are checking reports that the teen, whose condition was upgraded to serious, tried to kill himself before. His classmates struggle to cope with the shock.

Sheriff’s investigators said Tuesday that when a 16-year-old high school student recovers from a near-fatal suicide attempt that jarred the calm of a classroom, they intend to determine how he obtained a .45-caliber handgun and whether his parents may have negligently made it available.

“There are circumstances surrounding that weapon that won’t go away, and which we’ll have to look at closely as soon as we can,” said Lt. Dan Martini, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. Martini said deputies were checking reports that the student had tried to kill himself once before.

Martini said new state laws could make the parents liable if the semiautomatic handgun were accessible to a minor, “but it would have to be an almost blatant, reckless use of the weapon. This is a difficult set of circumstances. I don’t know how much liability there will be vis-a-vis the security of the weapon, but it’s something we’re going to look at.”

The parents could not be reached for comment Tuesday, but sources close to the family said the boy went home shortly before the incident at 12:44 p.m. Monday and obtained the weapon from a locked chest belonging to his father.

Despondent over his girlfriend breaking up with him, the junior at Aliso Niguel High School stood up during fifth-period photography class, placed the gun under his chin and fired a single shot in front of the girl and 26 other classmates, authorities said. No one else was injured.

The bullet went up through his mouth and out the base of his nose, and despite needing extensive reconstructive surgery, he should recover fully, officials at Children’s Hospital at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center said Tuesday, when his condition was upgraded from critical to serious. He never lost consciousness and suffered no neurological damage.

As Aliso Niguel High School students struggled Tuesday to cope with the shock of the incident, a team of psychiatrists, psychologists and other counselors held individual and group meetings in the school’s library.

In a letter sent home to parents Tuesday, school Principal Denise J. Danne noted that “the student left campus without permission (Monday) and returned with the gun.”

“He was despondent over the breakup of his relationship with his girlfriend and told her that he was going to shoot himself,” Danne’s letter states. “At no time was any staff member alerted to this personal crisis. . . . Most crucially, I have underlined the importance of adhering to the policy of zero tolerance towards any type of weapon on campus.”

Investigators, meanwhile, tried to learn more about the student’s mood leading up to the shooting and how he readily obtained the weapon.

The boy’s recovery “is most important for now,” Martini said. “This is a very traumatic event that the family is going through. But as soon as he’s back on his feet, we’re going to talk to him and the family extensively.”

A source close to the family said Tuesday that the boy had been “seriously depressed for more than a year” and had attempted suicide on an earlier occasion. The previous attempt was confirmed by several sources.

The boy obtained the weapon from a chest that his father kept under lock and key, sources said, noting that the parents were stunned to learn about the incident and mystified about how he secured the weapon. Sources said the father is a Marine Corps officer.

Contacted by The Times, the father of the boy’s former girlfriend declined comment, while school officials noted that the girl didn’t show up for class on Tuesday.

Jenny Danenhauer, the staff psychologist at Aliso Niguel High School, said the boy and his family moved to Orange County from Hawaii, where he attended Kalaheo High School during the 1992-93 school term. Danenhauer said the boy had been under the care of a psychotherapist for depression.

But asked if the boy had previously attempted suicide, she replied, “I just think it would be a violation to share that information.”

Valerie Johnson, the teacher of the photography class in which the boy was enrolled, met with her fifth-period students on Tuesday, and later, the students huddled at length with 20 counselors provided by the Capistrano Unified School District and the Sheriff’s Department.

“A lot of them felt angry that he had violated them, the school, and their security in choosing this place to do it,” Johnson said. “I’m thankful that he is going to be all right and that no one else was hit.”

Johnson said that she too felt violated and was still in a state of shock a day later, since the boy had shown no indication of being depressed. School administrators had never warned her, she said, about the boy being potentially unstable.

She described him as a good student, albeit a quiet and moody one, and no different on Monday--prior to the shooting--that at any other time. “It’s not like he was a flake or anything,” Johnson said. “I feel kind of numb from it all.”

Times staff writer Len Hall and Times correspondent Frank Messina contributed to this report.