Vice Principal Was the Target of Youth’s Attack, Police Say

A vice principal was the apparent target of the 18-year-old gunman who opened fire with a shotgun at his high school, wounding four others before he was shot by a campus police officer, authorities said Friday.

Officials declined to say why they believe Jason Hoffman, a senior at Granite Hills High School, targeted Vice Principal Dan Barnes, who was fired at once but escaped unhurt by diving into a doorway. In all, 10 people were injured in the afternoon shootout.

“All we can say about the motive is that, at this point, by virtue of the charges, you can say that the focus of this subject’s behavior was the vice principal,” said San Diego County Dist. Atty. Paul Pfingst.

Pfingst said he planned to charge Hoffman with attempted premeditated murder, plus four counts of assault with a deadly weapon. Along with accompanying allegations that a gun was used, the charges could bring a possible maximum prison term of life plus 47 years if Hoffman is convicted, the prosecutor said.

New reports Friday added to a portrait of Hoffman as a troubled young man who had turned violent at school before.

Four years ago, Hoffman was prosecuted as a juvenile for assaulting a fellow student with a racquetball racket at a different school, according to a law enforcement source. Hoffman, then 14, was accused of assault with a deadly weapon but the allegations were downgraded to misdemeanor charges because the victim’s injuries were minor, the source said. Hoffman was ordered to take anger management classes, the source said.

Bernadette Roberts, a classmate of the suspected gunman at Granite Hills, told reporters Friday that Hoffman “was so mad, he’d throw his mouse and keyboard across the room. One time he said, ‘I wish I could do Columbine all over again.’ ”

Roberts said she reported the comment to teachers. School and law enforcement officials said they were investigating such reported threats.

One of Hoffman’s friends at school said the suspect was quiet and an introvert, but prone to short-lived bursts of anger. Tommy Hardy said Hoffman began missing classes several weeks ago and his grades suffered.

“Sometimes he got mad, little things would get him mad, like if he messed up a project he’d throw down his hands” or swear loudly, said Hardy, a senior. “He wasn’t crazy, just angry. He was always mad at teachers because they wouldn’t teach him the things he wanted to know.”

Ralph Hoffman, the suspect’s father, said Friday that he knew nothing about the shooting or his son’s alleged involvement.

“I am sorry for what happened, but I do not know anything,” Hoffman said during a brief interview. He said he hadn’t spoken with his son since the shooting. “I can’t talk to him,” he said. He declined to elaborate.

The suspect’s mother and the elder Hoffman split up when Jason Hoffman was 3 months old, records show.

Granger Ward, superintendent of the Grossmont Union High School District, would not discuss Hoffman’s campus disciplinary record, citing confidentiality laws.

During a news conference, Ward announced plans to reopen the school Monday after the second shooting at a high school in his district in the last three weeks. He said counselors would be assigned to each of the school’s 108 classrooms and he encouraged parents to join their children.

Officials allowed about 200 students and parents onto campus Friday afternoon to collect belongings left after the shooting. But even on the arms of their parents, some students found the brief return to campus chilling.

“It feels very weird and strange. It makes you feel like someone is going to jump out from the bush or something,” said 15-year-old Jennifer Strom, who was hospitalized with chest pains during the ordeal. She had recently undergone heart surgery.

Tragedy’s aftermath has become agonizingly familiar to Grossmont officials. Granite Hills and Santana High School in nearby Santee, where an alleged rampage by a 15-year-old freshman on March 5 left two dead and 13 others injured, are six miles apart.

“We need to reclaim our school,” Ward said.

The Granite Hills shooting proved far less devastating. The only student other than the suspect who was injured seriously in the attack was released Friday from Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego. The 16-year-old junior, Andrew Yafuso, had been struck in the chest, face and arms with pellets from a shotgun fired from a distance that a doctor estimated at three to seven yards.

“He had a close brush with death,” said Frank Kennedy, the hospital’s trauma director. “If the distance from the gun to the victim, instead of seven yards, had been three feet . . . we might have been talking about him [being] in the morgue.”

The condition of a 51-year-old man who suffered chest pains while running to find his child after the shooting was upgraded from critical to serious at Grossmont Medical Center, according to Eileen Cornish, a hospital spokeswoman.

Everyone else among the 10 people who suffered various injuries during the ordeal had been released except Hoffman. He remained in stable condition, guarded by police, and was transferred to the secure unit at UC San Diego Medical Center on Friday afternoon, Cornish said.

A titanium plate was permanently implanted in Hoffman’s lower jaw to replace bone shattered when he was shot by campus Police Officer Rich Agundez Jr. The suspect’s mother came to the hospital to visit Thursday night but was turned away at the request of authorities, Cornish said. The mother hadn’t returned by Friday afternoon, the spokeswoman said.

Kennedy said Hoffman is expected to remain hospitalized for several more days.

Pfingst said it is possible that the arraignment will take place at the hospital. Arraignment could be as early as Monday.

Authorities said Hoffman, with his jaw wired shut after surgery, gave El Cajon police investigators a statement by scribbling notes.

El Cajon Police Chief James Davis described for reporters a step-by-step account of the 90-second shooting, which threw the 2,900-student school into chaos.

Davis said Hoffman appeared to have acted alone. He said the suspect parked his pickup at the school entrance shortly before 1 p.m. and strode onto campus with a 12-gauge shotgun in hand and a .22-caliber pistol tucked into his waistband.

Davis said Hoffman saw Barnes, the vice principal, outside the administration building and fired once with the shotgun, missing. Hoffman is thought to have fired two more times, shattering windows and spraying other victims with shotgun pellets before being wounded by Agundez, the El Cajon police officer assigned to the school. The suspect collapsed on the street in front of the school and was arrested by Agundez and a San Diego County sheriff’s deputy who happened to be on campus.

One of the five shots fired by Agundez hit Hoffman’s shotgun and appeared to have disabled it, Davis said. Davis said the suspect did not fire the pistol.

Davis said a search of Hoffman’s residence turned up another pistol, a black-powder muzzle loader. He said all three weapons were owned by Hoffman, who turned 18 on March 10. Davis said investigators were looking into when the guns were purchased and by whom.

Hoffman and his mother live in a complex of pillbox apartments priced at $550 a month for two-bedroom units. A neighbor said the apartment where Hoffman lived was spotless. He said the lights would often stay on all night and there were thousands of videotapes piled up inside.

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Times staff writers Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, Scott Gold, Geoffrey Mohan and Steve Berry contributed to this story.