Slaying Suspects Barred From Going to School

Two Crescenta Valley High School seniors were banned from the campus Tuesday after Glendale police confirmed to school administrators that they remain suspects in a drug-related double murder last year.

Damian Kim and Marian Kim, who are not related, were barred from all school activities, including graduation next month, Glendale Unified School District officials said.

The 18-year-old students were not expelled or suspended and will receive independent study materials to be completed at home. They are expected to communicate with their teachers only over the phone, school officials said.

“We believed it was in the interest of the students and their families,” said district spokesman Vic Pallos, after school officials met separately Tuesday morning with Marian Kim and her parents and Damian Kim and his father.

The two students have not been charged in the killings, were not witnesses in a recent trial involving the deaths and deny any part in the killings.

School officials blamed police Tuesday for failing to notify them earlier that the students were suspects in the crimes. They had said last week that they were unaware that the two had been named in court as suspects. Glendale police said Tuesday that school officials should have known that the two were suspects by having monitored recent court proceedings.

The two were first identified by prosecutors as suspects in court papers filed in March, and their names were repeatedly mentioned during the trial of 16-year-old Michael Demirdjian, the only person charged in the murders. His trial ended last month in a hung jury.

“I wish I had known this sooner,” said Supt. James R. Brown. He said he assumed that police would tell school officials about suspects who are students, whether they had been charged or not.

Immediately after the slayings last July of 13-year-old Chris McCulloch and 14-year-old Blaine Talmo Jr., whose bodies were found on a La Crescenta elementary school playground, police held daily briefings for district officials, Brown said. But about 1 1/2 weeks into their investigation, police stopped giving out information, citing the need for confidentiality for their investigation, Brown said.

“We had asked the police early on that if there was anyone involved at our school, we’d appreciate any information about that,” Brown said.

Sgt. Rick Young, spokesman for the Glendale Police Department, said police advised district officials three months ago to monitor the murder case, attend Demirdjian’s trial and “to pay attention.”

Police were still investigating and by law, according to Young, the additional suspects’ names could not be disclosed at the time because they had not been charged. “We did the only thing we could do, which was to alert them,” Young said. “They attended the court sessions, they should have figured it out, that’s our feeling.”

District officials said a representative attended some but not all the court sessions.

“Somebody might have heard [the names] and not referenced the fact that they were in school,” Brown said. “We didn’t know they were students.”

The names of the two were disclosed in legal papers filed in court by prosecutors in March naming them and two teenage friends as “suspects in this double homicide.” None of the four have been charged, and in police interviews all said they were together en route to Palm Springs at the approximate time of the murders.

During Demirdjian’s murder trial, prosecutors referred repeatedly to Damian Kim and Marian Kim and presented evidence connecting them to the slayings, but did not call either as a witness.

Prosecutors alleged that Demirdjian, Damian Kim and several others conspired to attack 19-year-old Adam Walker after Walker allegedly took money from Demirdjian and Kim without giving them drugs in return.

Prosecutors said the victims--one of whom allegedly had introduced Demirdjian to Walker--were killed during another plot to ambush Walker. Walker is not a suspect, authorities said.

Demirdjian testified that he is innocent and that Walker committed the killings in a fit of sudden rage. Demirdjian did not implicate any of the four in his testimony. He faces a retrial next month.

In a recent interview at his home with his parents nearby, Damian Kim denied any involvement in the killings and said he had never seen the victims before.

Neither the students nor their families could be reached Tuesday for comment.

But Linda Evans, co-principal at Crescenta Valley High School who was at the meetings, said, “I think more than anything else these parents wished this issue would close for their children and the fact that it hadn’t closed for them was very difficult for them.”