Student Charged With Involuntary Manslaughter in Classroom Slaying

Police on Friday said a shooting at Fairfax High School that killed one student and wounded another was accidental and that the 15-year-old suspect has been charged with involuntary manslaughter.

The Thursday morning shooting occurred in an English class when a gun discharged while it was in the 15-year-old student’s backpack. The bullet wounded classmate Eliaho (Eli) Kogman, 17, and killed Demetrius Rice, 16.

“Based on our interviews with the children, the teacher, the suspect and the physical evidence at the crime scene it appears that this was an unintentional shooting, that the knapsack was on the top of his desk and he was playing with the gun inside when it went off,” said Detective Wendi Berendt of the Los Angeles Police Department.

The teen-ager, who is being held at Eastlake Juvenile Hall, will be arraigned Monday on the involuntary manslaughter charge and on a second count of carrying a loaded weapon on school grounds. Because of his age, police will not release his name.

But in a telephone interview, his 20-year-old sister told The Times that he is “very, very distraught. . . . He’s somewhat in a state of shock right now, but he just kept telling us how sorry he was. That’s all he keeps saying.

“I’m not trying to say that carrying a gun was the right thing to do, but he didn’t mean to shoot anybody. When the gun went off, he tried to help the (wounded) boy. I just want people to know it was an accident,” the sister said.

She said her brother and a cousin, who rode the RTD bus to school together, had been beaten and robbed by gang members on a bus about a week earlier. The boy, who lives with his grandparents, apparently took a gun that his grandfather kept in the home for protection and began carrying it to school.

But police say that that portrayal is only partly true.

“It’s a sad, sad state of affairs,” Berendt said. “This isn’t just an innocent kid bringing a gun to school for protection. The kid started carrying the gun maybe because he was afraid, but then he got into this ‘I’m a bad guy. Don’t mess with me’ thing, then he started bragging about ‘I’m gonna kill the teacher.’

“I think he was stunned when it happened . . . and I think he’s sorry because of the consequences, but this is a kid who’s hardened. This is not just some innocent thing.

“The tragedy here is that other kids knew he had the gun, but none of these children told. They were so in fear for themselves that none of them told and as a result two kids are shot,” Berendt said.

The mother of the dead youth also called for some system for children to report weapons on campus.

“There ought to be some kind of phone number or something that children could call to report guns anonymously,” said Mildred Hilliard, a single mother with no insurance who appealed Friday for donations to bury her dead son.

“The kids feel they have no way out. . . . They won’t tell because someone might find out, then they’re in danger.”

Hilliard said her son, a popular football player, had never expressed fears for his safety at Fairfax. She learned of his death hours after the shooting when her daughter heard news reports and urged her mother to telephone the campus.

“It was hard to believe,” she said. “It’s still hard to believe. He is a very, very sweet child, a loving child. He was never afraid. He shouldn’t have to be afraid to go to school.”

The idea of an anonymous reporting service has been endorsed by school board member Jeff Horton, who represents the Fairfax area. Supt. Sid Thompson said district officials will study the matter next week.

“It’s definitely worth exploring as something we could do for the whole system,” Thompson said. “Now we say to students: ‘If you have a problem or you’ve seen a gun, you should give that information to someone at campus that you trust, a teacher or a counselor.’ But this might be better because it’s absolutely anonymous.”

Fairfax High School Principal Michael O’Sullivan said school officials constantly try to impress upon students the importance of reporting guns. He reiterated that message Friday in the classroom where Rice was killed and Kogman was wounded the day before.

“This is different from not reporting someone who’s writing on a wall,” O’Sullivan told the 10 students who showed up for teacher Charles Schwartz’s English class. “You, more than anyone else, know that a gun can hurt you.”

The mood in class was somber, with psychologists on hand to counsel students. Several wiped away tears as the teacher led them through a lesson on how to write a letter of condolence. Outside, at a news conference on the school steps, Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Brentwood) said he will introduce legislation to allocate state funds to the Los Angeles Unified School District to pay for metal detectors.

The idea of installing metal detectors has been rejected by district officials, partly because of cost, which is estimated at more than $30 million for all 49 high school campuses.

In addition, Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky said he will ask city airport Director John Driscoll to provide technical advice to the district about the use of the devices.

New York City school officials began installing metal detectors at school entrances about three years ago. Now, 41 of that district’s 125 high schools have two X-ray machines to examine backpacks and purses, and six to eight hand-held metal detectors. The X-ray machines cost about $20,000 apiece and the hand-held detectors cost about $150. The main expense is staffing for the detectors, with salaries at each school topping $300,000 a year, according to district press secretary James Vlasto.

The New York City Council--which funds the school district--appropriated $28 million to pay for the security program after two students were shot to death at a Brooklyn high school last year.

Officials of the New York school district and teachers union said they have been pleased with the results. “The number of violent incidents has plunged dramatically in the schools that have them,” said Neill l Rosenfeld, spokesman for New York’s United Federation of Teachers.

“No one says metal detectors are a panacea,” Vlasto said. “It’s an expensive deterrent but you’ve got to give the children and faculty some comfort zone because there are too many weapons on the street.”

But Los Angeles board member Horton said his “fear is that we will just do metal detectors and think it has been taken care of. This problem has many sides and there are no easy answers.”

He said parents could also help by checking their sons’ and daughters’ book bags.

Times education writers Stephanie Chavez and Larry Gordon contributed to this report.