Student Involved in Fatal Fight Won’t Be Expelled

Facing a deadline today to take action, the Palmdale School District has decided not to expel the eighth-grade boy involved in a fight that left another student dead, a Palmdale school official said Wednesday.

A special panel appointed by the Palmdale school board found that Stephan Corson’s death after he was punched in the face outside Juniper Intermediate School on Nov. 19 was an accident, and that the other student should be allowed to return to school, said the school official, who asked not to be named.

A preliminary investigation by Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives indicated the Stephan may have been killed not by the force of the other boy’s punch, but by banging his head on the sidewalk in the fall.

The Los Angeles County coroner’s office, however, has not been able to determine the cause of the 13-year-old’s death and is still awaiting laboratory results.

Corson’s family had been pushing for the expulsion of the other boy.