Campus threats rack nerves

Nerves are raw at area campuses after potential threats of violence emerged at two Southland schools, coming at the end of a month that has seen a spate of deadly shootings across the nation.

Many parents of students at one Anaheim high school planned to keep their children home today and police plan a major campus presence after a cryptic message was published in the school newspaper. And a university campus in Carson was locked down Thursday and swarmed by shotgun-toting police officers after witnesses reported a student carrying a rifle -- which turned out to be a training replica.

“After what’s been going on around the country, you start to recognize anything is possible these days,” said Anaheim Police Sgt. Rick Martinez. “You certainly can’t dismiss it. That’s for sure.”

The heightened concerns come in an unusually busy month for school shootings, which have taken place on at least six campuses nationwide, killing 10 and wounding 19.

The most recent occurred Valentine’s Day, when a former graduate student killed five people and himself at Northern Illinois University. Two days earlier, a 15-year-old boy was shot in the head at an Oxnard middle school.

School violence experts said a spike in campus scares was not surprising in the aftermath of shootings. Copycats seek media attention, while educators and students are on heightened alert, said Philip Mullendore, executive director for the California College and University Police Chiefs Assn.

“People are scared because it’s happening so much more frequently,” said Mullendore, former chief of the Pasadena City College police. “Everyone’s much more on edge and in all of the shootings, except for the Northern Illinois one, there were ample warning signs that were ignored. No one wants to be answering questions from the media, ‘Why did you ignore these warning signs?’ ”

The Southern California scares were among several nationwide this week.

Dozens of campuses in southwest Oklahoma were locked down Thursday after a man phoned police and threatened to bomb schools and shoot students. Police did a room-by-room search at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, N.J., on Wednesday, after a note was discovered that referred to the Virginia Tech massacre, where 32 people were killed last year before the shooter killed himself. Reports of weapons on campus on Wednesday also prompted lockdowns at schools in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Louisville, Ky.

In Anaheim, a cryptic message in the Savanna High School campus newspaper prompted police to step up patrols and was expected to result in widespread absenteeism today.

The note was among 150 messages printed in the “Love Gram” section of the paper on the day before Valentine’s Day and read, “To: Metal Destroyer Militia. Remember guys -- We all go down 2/22!! Let’s quit stalling!! Much Love! 666! All the way baby!”

School officials said students “magnified” the severity of the note through text messages and posts on MySpace.com. The school began an investigation last week and intensified campus security.

“Savanna High will probably be the safest place in the region Friday,” said Anaheim Union High School District Supt. Joseph M. Farley.

Still, some parents plan to keep their children home.

“It looks like it’s probably just a joke, but I’m taking it seriously,” said Margaret Witham, who has two children at Savanna. “I’d rather my kids be safe than have something happen. Why take a chance? It’s one day of school. That’s my children’s life.”

Witham’s daughter, Nadasha, said the media has blown the potential threat out of proportion. But the senior said the shootings in Oxnard and Illinois increased anxiety on the Anaheim campus.

“If the person who wrote the note was playing it as a joke, I don’t think it’s a good time to be joking around like that,” she said.

At Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson, a father dropped off his daughter about 8 a.m. Thursday and noticed a man carrying what appeared to be an assault rifle near a sculpture garden. He called 911, prompting Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies to swarm the campus. Students and faculty, alerted by e-mail and an automated call system set up in the wake of the April 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, huddled in darkened, locked classrooms as helicopters buzzed overhead.

Melissa Romero, 19, of Carson was in geography class when the lockdown occurred. She text-messaged her parents to tell them she was safe.

“I was scared,” the theater arts major said. “I told them I loved them and I’m sorry for messing up sometimes. They told me, ‘Don’t worry about that, it’s not important right now!’ ”

The lockdown lasted nearly an hour. The gun turned out to be a wooden replica that a student had used in an ROTC morning drill. When the student, whose identity was not being released, realized that he had been mistaken for a threat, he turned himself in to campus police, said Greg Saks, a university vice president.

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seema.mehta@latimes.com

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david.mckibben@latimes.com