School Suspends 2 Girls Over Alleged Threats

Two Balboa Middle School students have been suspended for allegedly making threatening remarks about wanting to kill classmates and having a hit list, school administrators said Saturday.

The incidents allegedly occurred Wednesday at the school on Hill Road, a day after 15 people were killed at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.

“That situation got them started,” Balboa Assistant Principal Lane Jackson said. “One girl was talking about it and said if she was pushed hard enough, she could see how someone would do that.”

The two eighth-grade girls, who have denied making the threats, were mailed letters Friday that explained the suspensions, Principal Helena Reaves said.

Reaves said she plans to recommend expulsion for the girl who allegedly claimed to have a hit list containing names of up to 10 classmates. Action against the second girl has not been decided.

Both girls are 13 and have a history of disciplinary problems, school officials said.

The girls allegedly made the threats on campus Wednesday but administrators did not hear about them until later that day after several parents called the school and complained, Reaves said.

School officials immediately reported the incident to police. Ventura Police Lt. Gary McCaskill said officers are helping the school investigate the matter.

More than a dozen students were questioned by administrators, and police officers were sent to the home of one girl to question her, school officials said.

Jackson said school administrators will meet this week with the mother of one girl and the guardian, a grandmother, of the other.

The student facing expulsion reportedly studies satanic worship, school officials said. That same girl also wears all-black clothing, crucifixes and other Gothic--or Goth--styles of clothing and jewelry. She occasionally paints her face white.

“She was the only Goth and that scares parents,” Jackson said.

The music, mode of dress and fixation with the dead are key elements of the Trenchcoat Mafia, the gang affiliation linked to the Littleton shooters, who also had expressed Nazi sympathies and timed the massacre for the anniversary of Hitler’s birthday.

Students have said the Goth-style girl was in a physical education class Wednesday when she allegedly claimed to have a hit list of onetime friends, mostly girls.

“She talked about one particular girl being on a hit list,” Reaves said of a student’s account. No list has been recovered, school officials said.

To no one in particular, this same girl also allegedly verbally threatened to kill classmates and teachers, students and school officials said.

The other girl, who does not dress in black clothing, allegedly walked up to several students on Wednesday and “used inappropriate language and words like ‘shoot’ and ‘kill’,” Jackson said.

“With the climate of white supremacy and hate crimes, our schools are a microcosm of that,” Reaves said. “We have troubled youth.”

The alleged threats came a day after two heavily armed students blasted their way through Columbine High School and killed 12 classmates and a teacher Tuesday before turning the guns on themselves.

In separate incidents Wednesday, four other Balboa students, two boys and two girls, were called into the school’s main office and spoken to by a police officer and administrators for allegedly using profanity and making hollow threats. Some threats were made during a heated basketball game.

“That was just bad timing and bad words,” Jackson said. The police officer was called as a precaution, but no other disciplinary action was taken.

In Thousand Oaks, sheriff’s deputies are investigating an incident that occurred Thursday afternoon at Los Cerritos Middle School in which a teenager was arrested for bringing a paintball gun on campus.

No one was injured in that incident but an investigation is ongoing, Deputy Ed Tumbleson said.