Another Gun Found at High School

School officials discovered another gun at John Marshall High School on Tuesday, days after two students were shot and wounded in an apparent gang-related attack, a Los Angeles Unified School District spokesman confirmed.

Following up on a student tip, police found a .38-caliber revolver in a student’s backpack, district spokesman Brad Sales said. The student, who Sales said claimed that he was carrying the gun for protection, was arrested on suspicion of possessing a firearm. He allegedly belonged to the same gang as the intended target of last Friday’s shooting, raising fears of retribution.

Meanwhile, the teachers’ union questioned the handling of Friday’s incident amid reports that a teacher and innocent students may have been left alone in a portable classroom with the alleged gunman for up to half an hour.

According to school police reports, suspect Yohao Albert Rivas, a junior at the Los Feliz campus, fled to his English class after the shooting. Police surrounded the classroom bungalow and brought students out one at a time to be checked.

“Although there were police outside the bungalow, the teacher was asked to supervise the class and stand by the door and let the students out one by one,” said United Teachers-Los Angeles President Day Higuchi. “The suspect had been [identified], which means police knew there was an armed student, who had shown a willingness to use the gun, in the room [with] the teacher.”

Higuchi accused school police of “using the teacher as a human shield” and called for a meeting of district administrators and Marshall representatives.

Auto shop teacher Tom Marshall, the school’s union representative, confirmed that many teachers had expressed concerns about the English teacher’s vulnerability in the situation.

Assistant Supt. Dan Isaacs, who arrived on the scene soon after Friday’s shooting, said he would arrange a meeting to sort through the accusations.

Rivas, 18, pleaded not guilty Monday to three counts of assault with a deadly weapon and of possessing and using a firearm on a school campus. He was an on-again, off-again student at Marshall and had enrolled nearly two weeks late for the current semester, which began July 2.