Stabbing Victim a Bystander, Official Says

A 17-year-old boy who was stabbed to death at a Glendale park Tuesday was apparently an innocent bystander at an ongoing dispute between two high school students over some broken stereo equipment, a school district spokesman and the boy’s father said.

“The victim was not involved in the disagreement at all,” Vic Pallos, a spokesman for the Glendale Unified School District, said Wednesday. “He was not one of the principals.”

Students at Hoover High School, where Tony Petrossian was expecting to graduate in just three weeks, told officials that he was trying to help break up an after-school fight at Brand Park when he was killed.

The fight apparently began when a friend of Petrossian’s bought a $50 amplifier that didn’t work from another Hoover High student.

Petrossian’s friend tried to return the item but he and the teen-ager who sold it to him argued about it last week and again on Tuesday, Pallos said. The two then agreed to settle their differences at Brand Park after school.

Petrossian went to the park Tuesday at the urging of his friend, who feared for his safety, and was later stabbed under the heart with a hunting knife during a melee, said Petrossian’s father, Alec.

The elder Petrossian bitterly questioned how severely the perpetrator would be punished.

“My feeling is of great loss,” the father said. “We are in deep grief now . . . I blame the system generally because there is no punishment. As long as we have this monkey business where police arrest people and say, ‘You have the right,’ there is nothing for victims.”

Glendale police declined to release any new details Wednesday about the stabbing, which reportedly involved a fistfight, baseball bats and about a dozen teen-agers.

Four teen-agers, ages 17 and 18, were arrested on suspicion of murder, all of whom were students in the Glendale Unified School District. Pallos said three attended Hoover and another went to Allan F. Daily High School, a continuation school.

A police spokesman said the incident did not appear to be gang-related.

Students at Hoover High, particularly seniors, were so overwhelmed with grief after the stabbing that as many as 24 sought personal counseling on campus and hundreds dropped by the Petrossian home to pay their respects.