Worries Loom at High School After Arrests

Worried parents kept many of their children home from high school here Wednesday following the arrests of two students on suspicion of making violent threats.

“It hasn’t by any means been a normal day here,” said Linda Solcich, a spokeswoman for the Antelope Valley Union High School District, who said school officials were besieged with calls from parents and the news media following Tuesday’s arrests.

The sprawling, 2,400-student campus in this Lancaster neighborhood is surrounded by tumbleweeds and horse ranches, and not much else. On Wednesday, however, the media swarmed. Satellite trucks set up camp across the street at 4:30 a.m., school officials said. Cameramen and television reporters with microphones followed students into and out of school.

One student said a TV crew member tapped on her car window, begging for an interview. Another said she feared going to school, but was ordered to do so by her parents. She left midmorning anyway, saying she feared a bomb might explode.

Another student told classmates she was ordered to stay home by fearful parents, but still came to school because she had to take a test.

The confusion and fear came in the wake of arrests by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department on Tuesday. A 14-year-old boy was held on suspicion of making threats to blow up the school, and a 15-year-old boy was being held on suspicion of making threats to kill classmates.

Both were in a juvenile detention facility on Wednesday.

Another 15-year-old boy had been detained Tuesday for possessing an inert hand grenade, but was released the same day to the custody of his parents.

Adding to that, authorities said a 17-year-old student at Highland High School in Palmdale was arrested Wednesday after threatening to bring a shotgun to school to shoot fellow students.

The student made those threats in front of a teacher and other students after being told to quiet down in class, according to Los Angeles Sheriff’s Lt. Dave Collin.

Antelope Valley Union High School District officials said Wednesday that they had also suspended, with the possibility of expulsion, six other Quartz Hill students for an undetermined amount of time because they made “inappropriate” remarks regarding school violence.

Last week, two students at Highland High School were also arrested for making inappropriate remarks.

Authorities said they were taking talk of violence seriously in the wake of the April 20 massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., where two students killed 12 classmates and a teacher before taking their own lives.

“It’s very weird and scary,” said Kamee Brown, 17, a Quartz Hill junior. “School killings, it seems to be trendy, and it’s hard to know if someone is just joking around or serious.”

“I guess you could say I’m in the eccentric group,” said 16-year-old junior Brian McConnell-Higgins, who favors an all-black wardrobe. “I had someone say to me, ‘If you bomb the school, don’t kill me,’ I wouldn’t do that. But people talk about that kind of stuff a lot.”

Quartz Hill High administrators said a high percentage of parents kept their children home, but did not have specific numbers. All day, they fielded calls from parents concerned about safety. Students attending classes worried too, with many seeking reassurance from teachers and counselors.

Rumors--all false, school officials said--circulated around campus: FBI and other federal agents were coming to the campus. More bombs had been planted. The school would be shut down.

Solcich and Quartz Hill Principal Barbara Willibrand said the school is safe. They said police thoroughly searched the school and found no bombs.

School officials said concerned parents should attend a meeting at 7:30 tonight in the high school’s gym. And the district is also planning two community forums next month on school safety.

“This is a good school,” said Nalja Grissom, 18, a senior. “I don’t understand why this is happening.”

Neither does Karen Mobilia, a Quartz Hill counselor. “I have no idea why students say they’re going to blow up the school or make bad jokes,” she said. “A lot do it to get attention, as a way of speaking out. But as a school, we won’t tolerate the threats or the jokes.”

School officials said TV news reports added to the confusion by making it seem as if the arrested students had conspired in an elaborate plan similar to the one executed in Colorado.

In fact, they said, the teens were arrested on separate allegations after fellow students, concerned about the Littleton tragedy, told school authorities of the boys’ comments.

From one of the boys’ homes, investigators seized a crude map of the school marked with bomb targets and an escape route, as well as a copy of “The Anarchist Cookbook,” a how-to manual on making explosives.

“Thanks to the Internet, it’s so easy for students to find this stuff out,” said June Head, 35, whose son is a sophomore at another Antelope Valley high school. “When I was in school, I never thought about guns or bombs. My son has told me he could get a gun from other students. He said it’s easy.”

In Gene Molino’s sixth-period senior economics class on Wednesday, Quartz Hill students discussed their fears from the arrests and Colorado tragedy.

“Anyone could come on campus,” one girl said. “Anyone could bring a gun. What’s keeping someone from doing that?”

Said another: “Why does it have to take a tragedy to make schools start caring about the problems we go through?”

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SHAWN HUBLER

The Littleton violence has spawned copycat threats that have ricocheted through America’s suburbs. B11