Two Men Surrender in Teacher’s Shooting

Teacher Alfredo Perez remained comatose in his hospital bed Friday as police arrested two men accused in the shooting that nearly killed Perez as he sat among his fifth-grade pupils.

Meanwhile, President Clinton telephoned words of encouragement to students and staff at the Figueroa Street Elementary School in south Los Angeles, who proceeded with classes amid a throng of news crews and public officials.

“I’m thinking about you and we should all be thinking about Mr. Perez and be strong for him,” Clinton told the youngsters.

Police said that after hours of negotiations, gang member Frazier Joseph Francis, 18, surrendered at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Southeast station at 2 a.m. Friday. He was booked on attempted murder charges stemming from shots he allegedly fired Thursday morning after he and fellow gang member Zerron Martez White saw a passing car they believed contained rival gang members. White allegedly drove the car in which Francis fled, Deputy Chief Mark Kroeker said.

Two of the shots strayed across the street, one hitting Perez in the school’s first-floor library, where he had taken his class of 23 fifth-graders, the other penetrating a second-floor classroom window but missing the 21 students there.

White, 22, turned himself in to KTLA-TV Channel 5 news reporter Warren Wilson, who took him to the LAPD’s South Bureau homicide unit at 3:05 p.m., Det. Larry Kallestad said.

White was heeding his mother’s exhortations to turn himself in, which were televised live from her living room.

“I know you’re afraid,” Earlene Hudson told her son. “I know you don’t know if this is the right thing to do. But I’m here. I’m waiting on you. I kept my end of the bargain. You keep yours.”

Both men remained in custody Friday night.

Fewer than half of the students went to Figueroa Street Elementary School on Friday, but Mayor Richard Riordan, Police Chief Willie Williams, City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas and numerous school officials were on hand to comfort students and school personnel, and to address reporters.

Riordan, Williams and Ridley-Thomas--often bitter political rivals--stood side by side to condemn the violence.

“As city leaders we need to make sure we work together for a safer environment,” said Williams, who also chastised news reports that portrayed the neighborhood as “a war zone.”

Riordan also praised the community’s successful fight against crime, but said the efforts must continue if events such as Thursday’s shooting are to be prevented.

“Although crime is down almost 40% in the South Bureau, I will not be satisfied as long as one mother has to tell her child to duck behind a parked car when they hear shooting,” Riordan said. “I am not satisfied when school administrators must ask for resources for bulletproof glass rather than books. “

“The shooting makes me damn angry,” Riordan added.

Joe Ahn, an aide to school board member George Kiriyama, said Clinton called the school at 11:30 a.m. and spoke briefly to the principal. Then, at the principal’s request, the president addressed students over the loudspeaker. His remarks were also translated into Spanish.

The president also telephoned Perez’s wife, Virginia, a Huntington Park second-grade teacher, to offer condolences. Friends said the Perezes, who were married in October 1994, had decided just days ago to try to start a family.

Crisis counselors remained at the school to help the children, teachers and staff deal with the trauma caused by the shooting.

Marian Fukuda, the school psychologist assigned to Figueroa Street, said that seeing Perez’s car--still in the parking lot Friday--was a painful reminder to teachers of their colleague’s plight.

While comforting one another, Perez’s friends and students found their own ways to address their pain. One teacher continued his daily ritual of leaving a newspaper’s sports section at Perez’s door as a favor to the athletic 30-year-old instructor.

Second-grade teacher Craig Slattery was one of several who had his class draw get-well cards for Perez.

“It’s their way of alleviating the feelings they have,” he said of the pictures of blue skies, angels, flowers and tidy homes, and cheerful messages to Perez, written with crayons in both Spanish and English.

Perez remained in critical condition in the neurological intensive care unit at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center.

Though still in a coma and dependent on life-support systems, Perez improved slightly, doctors said .

Samuel Viggers, vice chairman of neurosurgery at the hospital, said it is too early to predict the extent to which Perez might recover.

“It’s something of a miracle that the human spirit is able to sustain such grievous wounds,” Viggers said.

The human spirit was also in abundance at the school, where parents, teachers and students went on with a scheduled African American event.

All teachers came to work, even several who were on vacation.

Gloria Westfield, who works as a community representative at the school and lives nearby, said some parents told her they might move their children to another school, but most others assured her they would remain.

“Even if I had another place to go, I still would not leave South-Central. I believe that you’ve got to give back to your community,” said Westfield, who has lived in the neighborhood for 35 years and sent her children to Figueroa Street. Several other parents echoed her.

Riordan joined the groundswell of community activism following the tragedy. He said he was trying to find donors to cover the estimated $80,000 cost of installing bulletproof widows at the school, but pledged to “make it happen, even if I have to pay for it myself.”

(Despite their brief show of solidarity, Ridley-Thomas later criticized the mayor’s gesture. “We need systemic solutions. Charity is not what drives government,” he said. “I would have been more impressed had he done it discretely or anonymously.”)

Upon hearing a broadcast of the mayor’s remarks, actor Edward James Olmos agreed to help cover the cost of the windows.

Times staff writers Bettina Boxall and Times correspondents Michael Krikorian and Maki Becker contributed to this story.