Teacher’s Image Doesn’t Jibe With Picture of Accused Killer : Crime: Students can’t believe their role model helped beat a truck driver to death. Denneth Jackson pleads not guilty.

Those who knew Denneth Thaddeus Jackson as a North Hollywood middle school teacher are struggling to reconcile their memories of a supportive and fiercely moral role model for his students with the Jackson arraigned Tuesday for allegedly helping gang members beat a man to death after a minor traffic accident.

“When we heard what happened, everyone who knew him immediately thought that he had been there to stop it, not hurt someone,” said Joanna Kunes, principal of Madison Middle School, where Jackson was wildly popular with students as a history teacher in the seventh and ninth grades.

“It’s very hard to reconcile the very positive and upbeat image with the report of what happened this weekend,” said Kunes.

Under overcast skies Tuesday, school counselor Stephanie Palmer tried to help students make sense of the news.

“The students are distressed,” she said. “They don’t want to believe it could happen. They can’t reconcile the image of Mr. Jackson the teacher with the Mr. Jackson that could have done this.”

“He was like the perfect teacher, y’know?,” said one of Jackson’s ninth grade students. “He was real cool, and when he talked, his students listened, not like other teachers.”

Throughout the day, Jackson’s students asked when their favorite teacher was coming back, and at lunch, many wrote letters to him. “They just can’t process it,” said Palmer.

Jackson and six other men pleaded not guilty Tuesday in Van Nuys Municipal Court to charges that they killed a Reseda man who accidentally drove into a parked pickup truck owned by a guest attending a party Saturday in Jackson’s apartment on Amigo Avenue in Reseda.

Many of the guests were gang members and teen-agers who were drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana, Los Angeles police said.

Jackson and the others were charged with using pool cues and chunks of wood, as well as their fists and feet, to beat to death Julio Aguilar, 23. His brother, Jose Aguilar, 21, remained in serious condition Tuesday at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, police said.

At the school, Jackson’s admirers talked about his almost magical way with students.

“They connected very early to him, and very strongly,” Kunes said. “He had an excellent rapport with students. This whole thing is startling, stunning, shocking.”

His best friend at the school, fellow teacher Roy Kassebaum, 24, said Jackson’s goodness extended to everyone around him. “When I needed him he was there, and vice versa, although I leaned on him a lot more than he leaned on me.”

In interviews with teachers, students and one of his college professors, the portrait that emerges of Jackson is of a man who talked little about his past, was proud of his Latino heritage and saw himself as a leader, especially of young people. He was respected by those younger and those older than he was.

Before his arrest on Saturday, Jackson appeared to be beating the odds after what he described to Kassebaum and others “as a rough time growing up,” including flirtations with--and possible membership in--a street gang.

Originally from San Antonio, Tex., he moved to Los Angeles and was graduated from Cal State Northridge in June, 1994, with a bachelor’s degree in Chicano studies and obtained a teaching job under the Los Angeles Unified School District’s emergency credential program.

Of mixed ancestry--Latino, African American and Native American--Jackson took a particularly strong interest in Latino culture, friends and professors said.

“He was one of those handful of kids who you could see sparks go off when it came to learning,” said Lorenzo Flores, who teaches writing courses in the Department of Chicano Studies at CSUN. “He was in the writing lab every other night, either working on a paper or helping someone on their paper.”

About Jackson’s possible gang involvement, Flores said: “He was trying to get away from that lifestyle, trying to get his education. College had changed him.”

While applying for a teaching position at Madison, he told the principal that he had previously taught students held in the county’s detention system, Kunes said.

“I remember when he got the job,” said Flores. “He had elation on his face and he told me, ‘I’m a teacher! I’m a teacher!’ For me, it was like, ‘Wow! All right!’ It was very personally satisfying for me. He’s a kid that you root for.”

Among the 17 new teachers at the North Hollywood middle school this year, Jackson was one of the few who were able to get into the flow almost immediately.

During the anti-Proposition 187 demonstrations that recently swept across campuses, for example, he counseled students to think twice about leaving classrooms to march in the streets.

“He told them, ‘The only way to protest this is to stay in school and get an education,’ ” Kassebaum said. “They listened to him. He was a peacemaker; that’s one of the reasons it’s so hard to believe this.”

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Jackson’s goal was to organize a Chicano club at the predominantly Latino school and start teaching classes in Latino culture and heritage. “One of the reasons he wanted to be a teacher is to pass on his pride,” Flores said.

In addition to Jackson, those arraigned on murder charges were Brian Hernandez, 19, Van Nuys; Jose Luis Macia, 21, North Hills, and Oswaldo Ramos Perez, 19; Richard Lee Baker, 20; William Ronald Davis, 18, and Marvin Lewis Foster Jr., 22, all of Reseda. They were ordered held in lieu of $1.5 million bail, and a preliminary hearing was scheduled for Nov. 28.

Roger Finch, 23, of Reseda--who owns the truck that Aguilar drove into--was charged with attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon. He was held in lieu of $500,000 bail.

Two juveniles, 15 and 17, who were arrested in connection with the beating death, have been released to the custody of their parents.