2 Students Hurt in Shooting at Marshall High

Two students were shot and injured in a stairwell at John Marshall High School on Friday afternoon, bringing bloodshed to a Los Feliz campus that has been relatively free of violence.

The victims, a 16-year-old boy in 11th grade and a 17-year-old girl in 12th grade, were both in “very stable” condition at Queen of Angels/Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, where they were treated for gunshot wounds to the lower legs.

“They are not serious,” hospital spokeswoman Gwen Dilday said.

Two male suspects were taken into custody in a school classroom soon after the 2 p.m. shooting, which occurred shortly after students had moved between classes.

Los Angeles Unified School District police said they were unsure about the motive or whether any of those involved had gang affiliations.

Although the year-round school has gang problems, and homeowners living next to the gracious old campus wage a constant battle against graffiti, officials expressed surprise at the gunfire.

“Marshall has always been a safe zone,” said school board member David Tokofsky, a former Marshall High history teacher. “A lot of the kids come from neighborhoods that are not as peaceful as the school on the hill. . . . So kids tended to stay there all hours.”

Students also said that while off-campus fistfights are common and gang members occasionally drive by the campus and flash guns, serious violence is rare at the school, which sends many students to top universities. Marshall earned headlines last year by winning the National Academic Decathlon. It also won the national title in 1987, when Tokofsky coached the decathlon team.

Random searches of students for weapons are conducted daily at the school.

School police have an office at the bottom of the stairwell and immediately locked the building after the shooting.

Larry Hutchens, assistant school police chief, said the two suspects were arrested after a student pointed out the classroom they had run to. Police called the teacher to the door and students were asked to file into the hall one by one. The suspects, whose ages and names were not released, were taken into custody without incident. Police found a 9-millimeter handgun hidden in the classroom.

Officials did not know if the suspects were students.

Hutchens said investigators are unsure how many shots were fired, but believe there may have been just one.

The names of the victims were not released Friday afternoon, causing widespread concern on the part of parents. Dilday said that three hours after the shooting, the hospital was receiving phone calls from parents worried that the wounded teenagers might be theirs.

Gang shootings and other urban violence have taken their toll on Los Angeles schools in recent years, prompting increased security measures that have only been partially successful.

In the 1994-95 school year, there were nearly 300 reports of assaults with a deadly weapon in the school system.

Last winter, a stray bullet fired in the street struck a Figueroa Street Elementary School teacher in the head, gravely wounding him as he sat in the school library with his class. Bulletproof glass was later installed at the South-Central school.

And the random weapons checks at Marshall are no guarantee that guns will not be carried through its stately doors.

“The probability of slipping a gun by is good if a student is not randomly searched,” said Principal Steve Quon.

Staff writers Bob Pool and Elaine Woo contributed to this story.