Mother Seeks U.S. Probe of Boy’s Schoolyard Death

Mary Corson, distraught that no charges were filed against the boy who killed her son in a Palmdale school fight, urged the district attorney’s office Tuesday to reconsider its decision and asked federal authorities to investigate the incident.

Corson insisted that a teacher had already broken up the fight and that the other boy was the aggressor when he felled her 13-year-old son, Stephan, with a fatal blow to the chin.

Corson’s lawyer, Melanie Lomax, sent a letter to Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti asking him to review the finding that the other boy acted in self defense.

And Najee Ali, a community activist, also wrote to U.S. Atty. Alejandro N. Mayorkas on behalf of Mary Corson, asking him to begin a civil rights investigation.

“We’ll take a look at it and familiarize ourselves with the facts of the case,” Mayorkas said.

The district attorney’s office concluded Friday that Stephan started the fight Nov. 19 at Juniper Intermediate School. The other boy, a 14-year-old whose name is being withheld because of his age, was acting in self-defense, prosecutors said.

But Corson and Lomax say they have statements from witnesses who paint a different picture of the fight. One classmate told a private investigator that Stephan was trying to walk away when he was killed.

Lomax is also representing Mary Corson in a $10-million wrongful death suit against the Palmdale School District.