1 Student Shot, 1 Beaten in Fight

An apparent gang fight erupted into gunfire Thursday outside Grover Cleveland High School in Reseda, injuring two 11th-graders as students left school.

One student was shot in the pelvis and forearm, school district officials said. The other was beaten in the head with a blunt object, possibly a pistol butt, police said.

A third student drove the injured youths to Northridge Hospital Medical Center, Principal Al Weiner said. A spokeswoman there said the 17-year-olds were expected to fully recover.

Three men in their early 20s were arrested and police were searching for two more suspects. The suspects and the injured teenagers appeared to be gang members, said Officer Jason Lee, an LAPD spokesman.

The shooting occurred about 3:15 p.m., 15 minutes after classes ended, Weiner said. It began when a van carrying five men stopped near a fence on Vanalden Avenue across from the school, he said. They got out and began a fistfight with another group of males.

As the fight escalated, one of the men took out a gun and fired five to seven shots, Weiner said.

“I thought they were joking at first,” said a witness, Cleveland student Caitlin Long, 15. “When he pulled out the gun, I thought it was a fake gun.”

Police cordoned off two blocks near the 8000 block of Vanalden at the campus’ western edge. A dark blue Ford Thunderbird was impounded at the scene. No weapon was recovered, police said.

Long said she and a friend watched the attack from across the street as they walked home.

Amid six or seven young Latino men, two pairs were fighting on Vanalden, which was crowded with students, she said.

“One kid had the other in a headlock, and was punching him in the stomach,” Long said. “He was spitting up blood. But I didn’t think it would get to the point of shooting.”

Three or four of the men ganged up on one of the rivals, striking him 15 to 20 times, Long said. Another fighter watched for a moment, stunned, then ran down the street.

One of the attackers chased him, pulled out a pistol and fired five or six shots, Long said. The victim lay on the ground, bleeding and in obvious pain, she said.

School district police had come running when they saw the group pummeling the young man, Long said.

“The cops were screaming, ‘He’s got a gun!’ ” Long said.

When students return today, extra police will be deployed around the campus, Weiner said.

“We will reassure our parents that this was very isolated,” he said. He praised the restraint shown by school district police.

“The fact that the police officer did not pull his gun and shoot is commendable,” Weiner said.

Gang graffiti was visible near the school, on a fence and light post, but Weiner said parents usually remove such markings within a couple of days. “We were hoping to get rid of it today,” he said, pointing to a local gang’s tag on the fence.

Students said gang members in their classes usually don’t cause trouble. “They are not looking for fights,” said Manuel Treto, 16.

But Jennifer LaSalle, 20, a former student who lives a few blocks away, said problems around the school have been escalating.

“This neighborhood is usually quiet, but it’s getting worse and worse because of gangs and younger and younger kids who do ridiculous things, like shooting people,” said LaSalle, who had gone to the campus to pick up her 13-year-old cousin.

Thursday’s shooting marked the fourth serious act of violence near Cleveland High since 1993, when a 16-year-old girl was killed in a gang shooting.

In 1996, a 16-year-old boy was stabbed more than a dozen times near the campus. Two years later, an 18-year-old was shot in the face during a fistfight at a campus track. Both survived.

Julie Korenstein, the Los Angeles Unified School District board member who represents the area, said she was very alarmed by Thursday’s shooting.

“It’s a quiet campus,” she said. “Once in a while there will be an altercation on campus, but it’s rare.”

Nevertheless, she said, the district would send a “youth relations” team specializing in dealing with gang activity to work with Cleveland students today.

“There are gangs throughout Los Angeles, but major activity at schools? Very rarely,” she said. “I can’t remember when there was an altercation of this kind at school.”

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Times staff writers Roberto J. Manzano, Andrew Blankstein, Thuy-Doan Le, Carol Chambers, Dalondo Moultrie and Jean Guccione contributed to this story.