Teen Fatally Stabbed at School

In what police say may have been a race-related slaying, a 17-year-old student at Hoover High School in Glendale was stabbed and clubbed to death Friday in front of the school, police said.

Police arrested a teenage Armenian gang member, also 17, on suspicion of the 3:45 p.m. attack. The victim was identified by police as Raul Aguirre.

Racial tensions between Latino and Armenian youths may have sparked the fight that led to the slaying, said Glendale Police Sgt. Rick Young.

“We’re trying to break down the many tensions in this community,” he said. “This was a senseless act. We have some real soul-searching to do.”

Young said Aguirre and a former Hoover High student were sitting in front of the school when a “carload with two or three males drove up and started a verbal argument with them.”

The argument quickly escalated into a fistfight, he said, and the brawl moved across the street to Toll Middle School, where it was witnessed by more than 20 people, police said.

There, Aguirre was hit in the head with a crowbar and stabbed four times in the back, chest and abdomen, Young said.

He died at County/USC Medical Center at 6:42 p.m.

The suspect, a Glendale resident who is no longer in school, was arrested a few blocks away. Police also are looking for up to four other youths involved in the fight, and they had interviewed the victim’s friend. Police recovered a crowbar and a knife.

While the suspect is a gang member, Young said police believe the fight probably was prompted by racial differences rather than gang rivalry.

“The victim is definitely not a gang member,” he said.

Hoover High Co-Principal Kevin Welsh said school officials had no comment on the slaying, which happened almost an hour after school was dismissed.

But Glendale Board of Education member Pam Ellis said she was distressed and shocked by the crime.

“This is unacceptable,” Ellis said. “This is not an attack on a school, this is an attack on our community.”

Lina Harper, another school board member, said Glendale schools have many “conflict-resolution programs where students learn to talk out their differences instead of using force.”

“It’s just embedded throughout the whole program,” she said, noting that the schools serve a diverse population in which 66 languages are spoken. “I think the school district has done as much as they possibly can, and they continue to work on these issues,” she said.

Foster is a reporter for the Glendale News-Press and Fox is a Times staff writer.