Oxnard High Student, 16, Stabbed on Campus; Alleged Attacker Held

A 16-year-old girl was stabbed in the stomach at Oxnard High School on Wednesday in what authorities said was a fight over a boyfriend.

The victim, a junior at the school, was treated at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard, authorities said. They said the injuries are not life-threatening. The girl was standing near a pay phone in the school quad about 12:20 p.m. when she was stabbed by a 17-year-old female student, who was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and booked into Ventura County Juvenile Hall, authorities said.

The alleged assailant did not try to flee, Oxnard Police Sgt. T. W. Lumas said.

The identities of the girls were not released because they are juveniles.

Authorities gave few details about the incident, saying only that the stabbing came after a confrontation between the girls over a boyfriend.

But a friend of the victim who saw the stabbing said the student with the knife entered the campus during the lunch hour, walked up to the victim, said a few words to her and then twice plunged the 3-inch blade into her stomach.

The friend, who asked to not be identified, said there was a lot of blood and that she held the victim until an ambulance arrived.

“She was screaming, ‘I’m gonna die! I’m gonna die!’ ” the 17-year-old junior said. “I was just saying, ‘You’re going to be all right.’ ”

The friend was one of about nine witnesses interviewed by police. Counseling will be provided today for any student requesting it, Oxnard High Principal James Edwards said.

Edwards said he will recommend the alleged attacker be expelled, regardless of whether she is convicted.

The Oxnard Union High School District has a zero-tolerance policy about weapons on campus, Edwards said. Large signs warning students that knives and guns are illegal greet them at the front gate, and there are posters in every classroom.

Since 1994, students at each of the district’s six high schools are randomly searched twice a day with hand-held metal detectors, Supt. Gary Davis said.

School resource officers visit one classroom in the morning and one in the afternoon, searching about half of the students in each class. In a school such as Oxnard High, with 2,900 students, that represents about 1% of the student body, Davis said.

“Our intent was for this to be a deterrent for weapons on campus,” he said. “This shows you that even with all the security measures we have in place, these things can happen.”

*

Times staff writer Amanda Covarrubias contributed to this report.