Intruder Stabs 2 Teens at Rio Mesa High

Two Rio Mesa High School students were stabbed and beaten Monday during a lunch-hour melee involving at least one gang member who sneaked onto the campus, authorities said.

The latest in a string of increasingly brazen gang attacks, Monday’s incident sent two teenage boys to the hospital and rattled parents and school officials across the county.

“We have had these incidents on or near every campus in the county, including some of the safest cities in the state,” said Ventura County Supt. of Schools Chuck Weis. “We can’t let gangs take over our county.”

One of the injured boys, a 14-year-old from El Rio, apparently suffered a punctured lung after being stabbed in the back, officials said. He was in serious condition after being transferred to Ventura County Medical Center from St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard. Authorities said the boy’s injuries were not life-threatening.

A 16-year-old student was released from St. John’s after being treated for stab wounds to the leg.

Monday’s assault--which follows a series of violent incidents including a gang attack on a Ventura school bus--apparently began with a confrontation between gang members from Oxnard’s La Colonia neighborhood and students from El Rio, authorities said.

Moments after the attack, sheriff’s deputies arrested Eric Padilla, 18, of Oxnard. Padilla is suspected of sneaking onto the campus and stabbing the boys while another attacker threw punches.

The second assailant ran from the scene and remained at large late Monday, officials said. Authorities, interviewing dozens of witnesses, said several other youths may have been involved.

At St. John’s hospital, two dozen relatives of the 14-year-old victim gathered, venting rage at the attackers and questioning whether the high school is doing enough to defuse gang feuds.

“His lungs are filling up with blood. The detectives are asking him questions, and he can’t even talk,” said the boy’s mother, Rosemary Medina.

“If my grandson ends up in a coffin, I will sue the school,” said the boy’s grandmother, Rosie Valvivia.

School officials, struggling to calm worried parents, vowed to heighten security. They hastily called a community meeting on the campus tonight at 7.

“We take it very seriously when outsiders come onto our campus and wreak this kind of havoc,” said Bill Studt, the school district superintendent. “I’m sure that parents will have a lot of questions and concerns, and we’d like to be able to answer those.”

The attack occurred outdoors during lunch break at 12:20 p.m. Officials and witnesses gave the following account:

A large group of students was gathered on the lawn when several youths nearby began shouting at each other.

“The El Rio guys were standing back at the fence when all of a sudden these two Colonia boys start yelling stuff like, ‘You guys want a piece of us?’ ” said sophomore Aaron Munoz.

Then the youths clashed, tearing at each other’s shirts and throwing punches. One of the students hurled a trash can at his attackers, witnesses said.

Suddenly, one of the attackers pulled a knife, stabbing the 16-year-old in the leg and then plunging the weapon into the 14-year-old’s back, students said.

“There was a lot of blood, a puddle of blood,” Aaron Munoz recalled, seeing the 14-year-old. “He was pretty calm about it, but he kept saying, ‘I got stuck, I got stuck.’ ”

Campus supervisors rushed in, tackling the knife-wielding assailant but failing to catch the second attacker, officials said. Students scrambled for cover, as sheriff’s deputies and paramedics converged on the scene.

Deputies rounded up dozens of witnesses and found a knife near the site of the attack. The bloodied students were rushed to the hospital.

Defending Rio Mesa High as safe, Acting Principal Barry Barowitz said five campus supervisors patrol the 2,000-student school and that a cross-wire security fence helps keep intruders out.

“I think we handled the situation appropriately,” Barowitz said. “We’re always prepared.”

He said he would make it a top priority to find out how one attacker slipped by security officers.

“It’s possible he climbed a fence,” he said.

The attack left parents and students badly shaken.

“I brought my son to school so he could learn--and now he has to watch his back?” said Sandra Juarez, who rushed to the campus to pull her freshman son from class after hearing police and ambulance sirens. “This is ridiculous.”

Said 17-year-old Jason High, “It was traumatizing, to see someone stabbed in front of you. It’s awful. No one understands why this is happening. What’s next? Is someone going to pull a gun?”

The El Rio attack came the same day Ventura officials gathered to discuss gang violence in their city, including a recent school bus attack and a gang-related beating of a 16-year-old continuation school student in a classroom.

“My concern is that it doesn’t lead to other violence, that this doesn’t spread out into the county,” said Oxnard school board member Art Hernandez, whose son is a freshman at Rio Mesa. “I’ve been watching what happened in Ventura, because I realize it’s the kind of thing that can happen anywhere in the county.”

Chris Chi and Scott Hadly are Times staff writers, and Dawn Hobbs is a correspondent. Staff writer Miguel Bustillo also contributed to this story.

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School-Related Violence

* March 9: Two Rio Mesa High School students are stabbed by two youths--at least one a suspected gang member--during a lunch-hour assault on campus.

* March 3: A 22-year-old man is wounded in a drive-by shooting as he walks near Channel Islands High School.

* March 2: A 16-year-old boy is attacked by suspected gang members in a Pacific High School continuing-education classroom.

* Feb. 25: A busload of Buena High School students is terrorized when suspected gang members try to smash their way on board with a tire iron in the middle of a busy intersection.

* Feb. 5: A gunman fires five shots at a group of students in front of Ventura High School.

* Sept. 15, 1997: A Buena High School ninth-grade student is arrested for allegedly taking a loaded .38-caliber handgun on campus.

* May 2, 1997: A 12-year-old girl walking home from Cabrillo Middle School is shot in the arm, an unintended victim of two warring gangs.

* March 25, 1997: A Buena High School student is stabbed in the back and another beaten by suspected gang members while walking with their physical-education class near Ventura College.