School Starts Under a Cloud

The signs of the first day of school were everywhere. Crisp new uniforms, shiny clean backpacks, freshly sharpened pencils and assemblies on how to avoid being kidnapped by a stranger.

As students worried about meeting their new teachers, parents and principals worried about the man who attacked six children in the South Bay during the first half of the year and seemingly disappeared once summer vacation began.

As the school year resumed this week, mothers and fathers came early to pick up their children. Parents flooded an elementary school with worried telephone calls and roamed the streets in patrols afterward to make sure children got home safely. At another school, the principal stood guard as classes let out, making sure each child went with the right adult.

The most recent assault by the South Bay molester was the abduction and molestation of a grade school girl on her way to Cimarron Avenue Elementary School in Hawthorne on June 4.

Parents at Cimarron and Century Park Elementary School in Inglewood, which also had a student who was assaulted, clearly had the molester in mind as classes began Wednesday and Thursday.

“We have asked the parents to be advised that he is still at large,” Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ron Spear said. “He still represents a risk until he is captured.”

At one time, the Sheriff’s Department had 150 people working on the case. They have scrutinized 1,850 leads and stopped hundreds of people in gray vans.

The leads now dribble in, with only 25 in the last two weeks. The task force has dwindled to 20 to 30 detectives from the Sheriff’s Department and police departments in Hawthorne, Gardena, Inglewood and Los Angeles. They are combing for clues as they reexamine each of the six molestations that occurred during the first six months of this year. They are also sifting through the files of known child molesters in the area the man frequents--primarily Inglewood, Hawthorne and nearby unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County.

But the immediate job in the schools is preventing another incident.

Los Angeles Unified School District police officers are patrolling schools earlier in the morning because that is when the molester strikes.

In Inglewood, police will issue new flyers when schools begin next week. And in Hawthorne, officers are increasing patrols around schools.

But it is at school where the first line of defense has been set up.

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A crowd of parents picked up their children at the Cimarron Avenue school as they got out at 2:25 p.m. on Thursday.

“I’ve been here since 2 o’clock. That’s how worried I am,” said Willestean Campbell Adams. “And I just live one block away.”

Monica Ivey, a parent-community representative who works at the school, said it was flooded with calls in the morning from worried parents. One woman wondered if she should take her child out of classes.

The day began with an assembly that included reminders on how to react when approached by strangers. After school, a special parent patrol drove through the streets to make sure children got home safely. A parent organization known as CANDLE--Community Alert Neighborhood Denouncing Lawbreaking Evildoers--is setting up safe houses to be marked with a yellow triangle.

At year-round Highland Elementary School in Inglewood, Principal Betty Jo Steward said she constantly stresses the basic safety rules about avoiding strangers and protecting yourself.

She doesn’t want to see a repeat of a May 30 incident when a 7-year-old girl was abducted moments after her mother dropped her off at Highland. The little girl was thrown into a gray van, raped and returned to school.

Highland officials have become so cautious that at times it has gotten downright embarrassing. Steward recalled an incident when a man dropped off his son at school. The boy didn’t want to go to class, and his father hit him. Teachers immediately called police, believing he could be the South Bay molester dropping off someone he had abducted.

“We just said to the father, ‘Oh, well. We were looking out for him,’ ” Steward said.