Boy, 12, Takes Rifle to School, Faces Expulsion

A sixth-grader at a West Los Angeles middle school faces expulsion for bringing an unloaded sawed-off rifle to school, officials said Thursday.

The 12-year-old boy was showing a bullet from the .22-caliber gun to a classmate in his homeroom when another student alerted the teacher, who confiscated the bullet and ushered the child to the school office, said Webster Middle School Principal David Legacki.

School police searched the boy’s backpack and found the rifle, which had a 15-inch barrel and a pistol handle and appeared to be homemade, Legacki said.

“It was so beat-up and rusty, it didn’t look operable,” he said. “The school police officer didn’t want to touch it [because] he feared it might go off.”

The boy was arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department in the March 13 incident, suspended from Webster and transferred to Palms Middle School while his case is reviewed, Legacki said.

Weapons possession cases are common on Los Angeles Unified campuses. During the last full school year for which statistics were available, 1995-96, there were 423 recommended expulsions for such possessions, about one-third of them--139--involving guns.

Legacki said the Webster student said he had found the gun, along with a bag of bullets that he did not bring to school, in an abandoned camper near his home.

“The kid was just showing off. It’s very unfortunate,” Legacki said. “Once he understood the magnitude of what he had done, he was very upset.”

Legacki described the boy as an average student who lives with his grandmother.

Under the California Education Code, principals must immediately suspend students found in possession of a firearm at a school or school activity and recommend the student’s expulsion to the Board of Education, said Wayne Iwahashi, the administrator of student discipline proceedings unit of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

However, not all cases of weapon possession result in immediate expulsion from the district, Iwahashi said.

Declining to discuss the Webster case, Iwahashi described district disciplinary guidelines: “If it [the gun] was not loaded, if the student did not present a clear and present danger to himself or others,” there is a possibility of interim placement at another school while the Expulsion Review Committee reviews the case.

The Board of Education would then determine whether or not the student should be expelled from the district or transferred to another school within the district, Iwahashi said.

The board has 40 school days to make a decision after the principal recommends expulsion.