 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Gunman wounds four at Calif. high school
Compiled from Times wires © St. Petersburg Times, published March 23, 2001 EL CAJON, Calif. -- For the second time this month, a teenager took a gun to a high school in the suburbs east of San Diego and opened fire Thursday -- this time wounding four others before he was shot in a brief but intense firefight with a police officer. Five other people were injured by falls and flying glass at Granite Hills High School, according to police and paramedics. Police identified the suspect as 18-year-old Jason Hoffman. It was unclear late Thursday whether he was a student. Police said he arrived at the school shortly before 1 p.m. with a handgun and what witnesses described as a shotgun, crouched into a sniper position and opened fire near the administration building of the 2,900-student school. He reloaded one of his weapons at least once, witnesses said El Cajon police Capt. Bill McClurg said the gunman then engaged in a "running gunbattle" with an El Cajon police officer who was assigned to a security detail at the school and responded to the gunfire almost immediately. Hoffman was wounded by the police officer during the exchange. He was taken to an area hospital with wounds to his jaw and buttocks, and listed in serious condition. Three students and a female teacher were also wounded by gunfire and were sent to local hospitals with shotgun pellet wounds. Their injuries were not life-threatening, authorities said. Junior Roger Pollock, 16, was in math class taking a test when he heard a rapid succession of about six shots. "I heard my teacher say, "Is that a skateboard?' I said "Nope, that's not a skateboard. That's for real,' " he said. He said he looked outside the window and saw a young man with blood on his face. Everyone in the class then ducked. The students stayed in the room for 20 minutes, until police escorted them out. There was an eerie sense of replay to the day's events, which unfolded just a few miles from Santana High School, where two students were killed and 13 others injured when a student opened fire there March 5. The dead from Santana High, in the neighboring town of Santee, were buried just 10 days ago. "This is a nightmare," said Glorianne Pollock, Roger Pollock's mother. "As a parent, I'm worried to send my kids to school. I just want to lock him in a room and keep him there. This wasn't as bad as Santana, but it could have been." Again, the teenagers first believed someone was setting off firecrackers, then heard teachers and school monitors screaming at them to stay down. Again, a high school campus was swarmed, first by police, then SWAT teams, paramedics, TV crews and anxious parents shouting into overwhelmed cellular telephones and searching for their children, who soon were allowed to file out of the school under the eyes of police. "After Santana, I felt a little scared to come to school, but I never thought it would happen at Granite Hills," said Cristina Flores, a 16-year-old sophomore. "I'm scared to go back to school. I can't trust people." Santee Mayor Randy Voepel had returned to work Thursday for his first full day since the shooting at Santana High two weeks ago. It was early afternoon when he got a telephone call about the shooting at Granite Hills. "All I could do is turn on the radio and try not to cry," said Voepel, calling himself a small-town, part-time mayor. "It's almost like getting robbed and two weeks later you get robbed again. We've been robbed of two children and here we are almost robbed again. It's a multiple crime." "It's terrible, I just got cold chills," Betty Jo Leyva said, her voice shaking an hour after learning of the El Cajon incident. Leyva's older daughter, Karla, 16, had been wounded in the Santana shooting. Leyva said she was watching television with her younger daughter, Genevieve, when she decided to flip channels to see what else was on. "I couldn't believe what I was seeing," she said. "I know what they are going through." At Santana High, a memorial to the students killed in the March 5 shooting is still in place. There, school officials broke the news of the Granite Hills shooting almost as soon as it occurred. "I was shaking, I felt I was going through it all again," said Santana freshman Kimberly Langnaid. A sobbing teacher was led to her car by a friend. Youth pastor Becky Lang rushed to SantanaHigh School, where her daughter is a junior and head of the Christian Club. Lang hugged the girl. Then she went straight to the attendance office to offer a hand with distraught parents collecting their children. Through all the effort, Lang was left with an overwhelming sense of futility. "I felt very ineffective as a youth pastor," she said. "Another kid in our community thought that resorting to violence was the answer." Across the street from the school, a group of shell-shocked looking teens sucked on cigarettes and wandered through the strip mall parking lot where two weeks ago apprehensive parents and weeping students milled in confusion after the Santee shooting. Noelle Topping said she was in an English class when the teacher told students there had been another school shooting. "I was so scared," she said, adding that she burst into tears and ran to the school's counseling center. "I just lost it," said the 15-year-old. "The shooting at Santana didn't even seem real to me yet. And I said, "If it happens again, it's going to seem real. I just didn't know it would happen so close." Upon hearing the news of the Granite Hills High shooting, Santana ninth-grader Rebecca Rivera, 15, said, "I couldn't believe it. We were starting to get back to our normal routine, but now I guess we're going to have to start healing all over again."
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
