Shooting Victims Stable; Campus Still in Shock

Three Taft High School students wounded in a drive-by shooting were identified Wednesday as a 17-year-old mother with a young son, a 16-year-old backup lineman on the football team and a gregarious 15-year-old known for his fondness for video games and baseball.

Police said they were the unintended victims of assailants who opened fire at a bus bench in front of the Woodland Hills campus Tuesday afternoon. The actual target was another Taft student, whom detectives interviewed Wednesday while authorities continued a citywide search for the gang members who are suspected to be responsible.

Nearly 400 Taft students stayed home from school Wednesday, some apparently frightened by the attack. On a typical day, about 100 students are absent from the 3,400-student public school on Winnetka Avenue at Ventura Boulevard, interim Principal Pete Ferry said. Those who did return Wednesday walked onto a campus transformed, with a thicket of television news trucks in the parking lot and uniformed police conspicuously prowling the grounds. A team of 20 crisis counselors in the school auditorium consoled youngsters still in shock from the gruesome scene they witnessed the day before.

Campus aide Xavier Martinez, who knows all three students, said the shootings “just broke my heart.”

“It always happens to the good kids,” he said. “They paid the price for gang stupidity.”

The victims were identified as Agustin Galindo, Lizbeth Santana and Paul Herzlich.

Galindo, a junior, plays defensive tackle on the football team. He is not a starter, but Coach Kevin Pearson said his staff was impressed by Galindo’s work ethic and had discussed getting him some playing time this season.

“This kid is such a sweet, quiet, extra-hardworking guy,” Pearson said. “It’ll be a shame if he misses this year, because he’s worked so hard.”

Martinez said he had known Santana since she was little girl, and called her “a sweetheart.” Santana, who moved to California with her parents seven years ago from Monterrey, Mexico, has a 2-year-old son, according to her aunt, Bertha Santana, who was visiting her at Northridge Hospital Medical Center.

“Doctors said the bullet entered Lizbeth’s back, traveled up to her shoulder, then up her neck to her chin and came out her mouth,” the aunt said. “She’s lucky that bullet didn’t hit her heart.”

Friends of Herzlich described him as an outgoing boy who was always quick with a joke. His grandmother, Adele Rosen, said he was “one of the nicest kids I’d ever want to know.”

“I know he’s my grandson, but he’s a real down-to-earth kid -- he never gets in trouble.”

Rosen said doctors at UCLA Medical Center medicated Herzlich to dull his pain throughout Tuesday night as a throng of friends and family, including his parents and brother, crammed into a waiting room for support.

Santana and Galindo were in stable condition at area hospitals, while Herzlich was considered in “serious but stable” condition, LAPD Officer Jason Lee said.

The Los Angeles Police Department assigned more than 40 extra officers to the case.

“We’re dedicating all available resources in an effort to find the shooters on this incident,” Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell said. “This is a major focus and we’re extremely serious about catching the people responsible for this crime.”

The shooting occurred around 2 p.m., when at least two men pulled up in a red Mitsubishi and asked bystanders where they were from, a common gang challenge, police said. One man then fired at least three shots from a semiautomatic handgun, striking the three bystanders.

Two fights involving youths had taken place earlier Tuesday on or around campus, but it was unclear if those incidents were linked to the shooting, said Det. Rick Swanston of the LAPD’s West Valley Division.

Before school started Wednesday morning, teachers and administrators met to discuss ways to cope with the shooting, and by the afternoon some said they had managed to pull off a semblance of a run-of-the-mill school day.

Many students said they felt safe on campus, but were still worried about the streets nearby.

“I’m scared, because what if the person who shot those people comes back to shoot the person he really wanted to shoot?” said sophomore Neelab Latifi, 14.

Others said they were too skittish to ride the bus. Tenth-grader Dion Waddy was one of the dozens of students waiting at the bus stop Tuesday when the shooting started. When Waddy came home, he told his mother he’d never take the bus again.

“I assured him I would pick him up from school,” his mother, Sabra Waddy, said. “To ease his mind, and to ease my mind, I will pick him up the rest of the week, maybe next week too.”

Sophomore Monique Ochoa, 15, said she didn’t have that luxury. “I’d rather not take the bus. Why would I want to take the bus after this happened?”

School officials are planning a special meeting for parents at 7 p.m. tonight at the school. And school board member Marlene Canter, who represents the area that includes Taft, said she plans to make a special request to Mayor James K. Hahn and the Los Angeles City Council to increase police presence in areas where students congregate before and after school.

Rosen, Herzlich’s grandmother, said it was hard to fathom why this was happening at all. “When my kids went to school. I used to worry if they were going to fall,” Rosen said. “Now my grandkid gets shot. How can anyone believe it?”

Although the school has not been immune to violence in its 43-year history, the shootings came as a shock to many in the affluent surrounding neighborhoods of the southwest San Fernando Valley.

Hahn said the incident was a “terrible tragedy,” but also a wake-up call to the entire city.

“I think people are alarmed when it seems unusual, but they need to be just as a alarmed when it happens anywhere in the city.... There are far too many young people getting shot, getting killed in the South Los Angeles area, the East Los Angeles area,” Hahn said Wednesday on the KPCC-FM (89.3) radio program “Talk of the City.”

“What we need to be reminded of is that there is no border on this.”

Times staff writers Andrew Blankstein, Patrick McGreevy and Cara Mia DiMassa contributed to this report.