Girl, 12, held in L.A. school shooting
Two teenagers wounded; one in critical condition
A 12-year-old girl was arrested Thursday at a Los Angeles middle school as a suspect in a classroom shooting that left two teenagers wounded, police said.
The gunfire erupted shortly before 9 a.m. at Salvador B. Castro Middle School just west of the city’s downtown, police said.
One of the students, a 15-year-old boy, was in critical condition from a gunshot wound to the head. A 15-yearold girl struck by a bullet in the wrist was in fair but stable condition, said Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Erik Scott.
Three others, including a 30-year-old woman, suffered non-gunshot-related injuries, police said.
TV footage showed a dark-haired girl wearing a sweatshirt being led out of the school in handcuffs.
Steven Zipperman, chief of the Los Angeles Unified School Police Department, said a weapon had been recovered.
School shootings by girls are rare. One of the most well-known cases was Brenda Spencer, who targeted Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego in 1979. The 16-year-old killed a principal and a custodian and injured eight children. When asked about her motivation, she reportedly said, “I don’t like Mondays.”
On Thursday, the Los Angeles school was placed on lockdown for several hours while authorities searched the students. The school has about 365 students in grades 6 through 8. Most students are Hispanic, and many are from low-income families.
The shooting comes a little more than a week after a 15-year-old boy was arrested on murder charges after police said he killed two and wounded more than a dozen in a shooting spree at a rural Kentucky high school.
Though school shootings are always alarming, James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology, law and public policy at Northeastern University says schools are, by and large, safe. “They’ve been safe for a long time,” he says. “They remain safe.”
Research shows that school shootings’ frequency and casualties have dropped over the past 20-plus years. Young people, he says, are far more likely to die off school grounds — in a homicide, a fall, a firearms accident, a drowning or even while riding a bicycle — than they are in a school attack.
Schools have “been safe for a long time. They remain safe.”
James Alan Fox Professor, Northeastern University