Board Expels Girl, 9, After Valley Gun Incident

The Los Angeles Board of Education voted Monday to expel for at least the remainder of the year a 9-year-old Panorama City girl who last month brought a gun to her elementary school and accidentally fired it, the bullet grazing a schoolmate.

The board voted 6 to 0, with member Jeff Horton abstaining, to remove the child from the fourth grade at Plummer School in North Hills. Under the ruling, she cannot apply for re-admission until early 1996.

On May 4, the girl found a loaded .40-caliber Glock semiautomatic pistol in her mother’s bedroom. She took the gun and removed the magazine with 10 cartridges, failing to realize that another round remained in the chamber.

At school, the girl pulled the trigger in front of a 7-year-old classmate and the bullet passed through the fabric of the boy’s jacket sleeve, police said. The girl dropped the gun and ran crying from the area.

She told police that she put the gun in her backpack to protect herself from gang members who had been threatening her as she walked to and from school.

The girl’s mother, Gloriette Littlejohn, 37, pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges that she allowed her daughter access to the gun.

Littlejohn is the first person in the city of Los Angeles to be prosecuted under the state’s 1991 Children’s Firearm Accident Prevention Act, which makes it illegal for a parent to leave a firearm where it can be found by children, who then fire, brandish or exhibit the weapon.

In 1993, the Los Angeles school district adopted a “zero-tolerance” policy toward children who bring weapons onto school grounds. Since then, 409 students have been expelled for violating the rule, according to district officials, although there have been some exceptions.