Stray Bullet Hits Teacher in Front of 5th-Graders

In the worst campus assault on a teacher in the history of the Los Angeles Unified School District, an errant bullet struck a fifth-grade teacher in the head Thursday as he and his students studied in the school library.

Another bullet flew into a second-floor classroom full of students at Figueroa Street Elementary School in South-Central Los Angeles but landed harmlessly in a wall.

Authorities said the shots were fired from across the street during an apparent gang-related dispute. The shots were intended for gang members, police said, but went astray and left Alfredo Perez, the teacher, as the latest inadvertent victim of Los Angeles’ relentless gang warfare.

Perez, 30, was taken to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center where he remained in critical condition after surgery, a bullet still lodged in his brain. His wife, Virginia, a second-grade teacher in Huntington Park, rushed there after hearing the news.

Late Thursday, police identified two Los Angeles gang members as suspects in the shooting.

A popular teacher respected by both his pupils and their parents, Perez was in the ground-floor library with his fifth-grade class when the bullet tore into his forehead at 8:50 a.m., shortly after school began.

Speaking to reporters later in the day, Maria Ochoa, 10, one of Perez’s 23 students, said her teacher was sitting in a chair when she “heard a very loud noise like someone was hitting something very hard.

“I was very scared and I couldn’t move from my desk,” recounted Ochoa, who had been reading a book about rocks. “Everybody was running around and shouting.”

She looked up to see Perez still in the chair, a bullet hole in his forehead and blood trickling from the wound.

She and her classmates ran out of the room and huddled on the floor of the hallway while administrators ran to the library.

“I just don’t understand why someone would try to kill him when he was such a good teacher,” Ochoa said as she fought back tears. “I hope he gets better. He has to get better,” she said.

“I loved him like a father,” said another of Perez’s students, Nancy Tejeda, 11, as she walked away from the school at Figueroa and 111th Place.

Police were seeking the public’s help in finding the two suspects--Frazier Joseph Francis, 18, who authorities say is believed to have fired the shots, and an alleged accomplice, Zerron Martez White, 22. A team of detectives interviewed witnesses at the scene, which led authorities to the suspects’ identities, police said. The handgun believed to have been used in the attack had not been recovered, officials said.

Police described the incident as follows: The assailants were on the corner across the street from the school, on foot, when they noticed a car passing, carrying someone from a rival gang. That sparked the impromptu gunfire, said LAPD Lt. John Dunkin. The errant bullets flew into the school.

“It was just happenstance,” Dunkin said.

The bullet that hit the second-floor classroom shattered a window and landed in a wall, leaving the teacher and 21 social studies students unhurt.

The teacher told the students to stay calm and ordered them onto the floor, where they spent the next 20 minutes until police arrived and put them in another room, said one of the students, Blanca Torres, 10.

Hospital officials said the other bullet entered the left side of Perez’s brain, crossed the midline and ended up on the right side of his brain.

“This type of injury to the brain is usually fatal or associated with severe neurological impairment,” a hospital statement said.

Perez was in intensive care and placed on life-support systems.

“After three hours of surgery, it’s still an hour-to-hour assessment and an hour-to-hour battle for his life,” said Taghi Tirgari, Perez’s neurosurgeon. “I personally didn’t think he could survive this damage when I first saw him. . . . My main concern is the pressure on the brain.”

Perez has taught at Figueroa since 1990 and was married a little more than a year ago. He and Virginia Perez had recently bought a house in the South Bay.

Perez--bilingual in a school where 70% of the 785 students are Latino--was described as charismatic by Principal Rosemary Lucente. “He’s the kind of person everyone loves,” she said.

Gunfire is all too familiar in the school’s South-Central neighborhood, just west of the Harbor Freeway. As in so many other parts of Los Angeles, the neatly clipped lawns and palm trees of nearby residential streets paint a deceptively serene picture. According to police, 13 shootings have been reported in the area since November, none fatal.

“The neighborhood is gang-infested,” said Delaine Webb as she picked up her two children from the school Thursday morning. “There’s shooting all the time. The kids here are used to it and that’s really sad.”

One afternoon last year, students and parents said, a man started wildly firing a gun less than a block north of the school. Students were kept late and Lucente said the administration started talking of having bulletproof windows installed.

Thursday’s incident renewed interest in that measure. A spokeswoman for Mayor Richard Riordan said the mayor has talked to school district officials about approving the request but is not looking to place bulletproof glass in every school.

Until this week, the elementary school had escaped the violence of its surroundings. The 73-year-old beige stucco building was viewed as a peaceful island of learning and promise in the neighborhood of African Americans and Latino immigrants.

“For us this school is the most important thing,” said Rafaelea Verdin as she arrived to pick up her two children. “This is a very good school. I think the teachers are very attentive. It signifies progress for our children. . . . We were all very shocked to hear what happened this morning.”

As news of the shooting spread through the neighborhood, clutches of nervous young parents stood by the police tape sealing off the school.

“There are shootings and other problems around here all the time. But not around the school,” said Maria Dieguez, whose 8-year-old son Joseph is a student. “At nighttime we stay indoors. You hear the shooting. But people don’t usually bother us.”

Perez’s students were interviewed by police after the shooting and school officials released students to parents who came for them. The district’s crisis team was brought in to counsel children and teachers, but classes were continued to try to restore a sliver of normality to the day.

“Sometimes the best things for kids in a situation like this is to maintain the routine,” observed Ruben Zacarias, deputy school superintendent for the district.

Marlene Wong, head of the crisis team, said her counselors talked to students about the incident and had them draw pictures of it. Many of the children also made cards to send to Perez’s family.

School officials, attempting to reassure shaken parents that their children’s classrooms were safe, distributed a bilingual message about the shooting: “While this random, senseless act of violence in our neighborhood has resulted in a deplorable, frightening and tragic situation for our school . . . Figueroa Street Elementary is still a safe place for your children to be.”

Some parents clearly needed reassurance.

“I feel like it could have been my child,” said the mother of a first-grader. “I feel kids should be safe in school. But now my child is more safe at home than at school,” said the woman, who declined to give her name.

Monroe Ratliff, whose 7-year-old granddaughter, Carlisa, goes to Figueroa, said he was terrified when he heard of the shooting. “I was scared and shaking until I saw that beautiful little girl’s face,” said Ratliff as he stood outside of his house just west of the school.

“I just don’t know what’s happening around here when people start shooting into schools,” he said. “I just don’t understand it. We all need to get together and stop this kind of stuff.”

Anyone with information about the suspects’ whereabouts is asked to call the LAPD’s South Bureau homicide division at (213) 237-1310. All information will be kept confidential.

Times staff writers Bettina Boxall, Richard Lee Colvin, Miles Corwin, Emi Endo, Amy Pyle and Paul Johnson and correspondents Michael Krikorian, Tracy Johnson and John Cox contributed to this story.