Boy Involved in Fatal Fight Will Not 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 school official said Wednesday.

A panel appointed by the Palmdale School Board found that the death of Stephan Corson 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 Stephan may have died when he hit his head on the sidewalk after he was knocked down by the punch.

The county coroner’s office, however, has not been able to determine the cause of Stephan’s death and is awaiting laboratory results that could pinpoint how the athletic 13-year-old died.

Stephan’s family has been pushing for the other boy to be expelled. His mother was distraught Wednesday night when she learned of the district’s decision.

“How can they get away with not punishing him?” Mary Corson said. “My son didn’t kill himself. The ground didn’t kill him. He died because of this other boy and that boy shouldn’t be able to go on like nothing happened.”

Detectives said the fight started in class when Stephan told the other boy to pick up spitballs from the floor. When the other boy refused, the two started arguing. After class, Stephan attacked the other boy, punching him in the face, detectives said.

The other boy fought back and knocked Stephan to the sidewalk, where he went into convulsions and stopped breathing. Witness statements implied the other boy was acting in self-defense when Stephan died, said Sheriff’s Sgt. Barry Wish, the lead detective on the case.

The other boy, who is 14, has been suspended since the day of the fight and has been living with family outside the L.A. area, according to several school sources. Today was the deadline for the school district to decide whether he would be expelled or sent back to school.

It’s unclear if the boy’s parents want him to return to school in Palmdale, said several sources. The boy’s father, a teacher in the Palmdale School District, could not be reached for comment Wednesday night.

School officials had previously said that if the boy was not expelled, he would be transferred to another middle school in the district.

Several black activists from L.A. and Palmdale had contended the school district would be lenient on the other boy because Stephan was black and the other boy is white and his father a teacher in the district.

Supt. Nancy Smith defended the decision as fair, though she refused to discuss it explicitly.

“If you looked at this case and 10 others, you’d see that we followed the same steps,” Smith said.

Under Palmdale school disciplinary procedures, the school board deferred the case to a five-member panel of administrators. The panel made its decision more than two weeks ago to send the boy back to school but members were instructed not to discuss their finding, said several sources.

“From the beginning, this incident has been wrapped in a shroud of administrative bureaucracy,” said the school official who spoke on a condition of anonymity. “And that’s a shame. We don’t even have the autopsy back yet and don’t know how [Stephan] died, but yet we decided it was an accident.”

Mary Corson said she will pursue legal action against the school system because she was not allowed to participate in the disciplinary hearings.

She moved to Palmdale three months ago from the San Fernando Valley so she could buy a home for her and her youngest son.

A medical transcriptionist by training, she hasn’t returned to work since her son died. Each day drags by, she said, in her wood-paneled apartment where she listens to gospel music, cries into the phone and stares at the collage of Little League shots and other pictures she made for Stephan’s funeral.

“How could they put this boy back in school with other kids?” she asked. “How he can wind up back in school when my child is dead?”