Gun-Toting Student Upsets Peace at School

In a neighborhood where violence hits close and often, the boosters of Lennox Middle School say their campus is something of an oasis.

A dress code prohibiting gang attire is strictly enforced at the school in the Lennox area, just east of Los Angeles International Airport. Graffiti are rarely found. One-third of the 1,600 students boast B averages or better. School officials say that no more than two dozen students are gang members--and even they don’t bring trouble to school with them.

But this week, the same officials were taken aback after a 13-year-old student, one of the school’s few reputed gang members, was arrested on charges of carrying a pistol he said was for protection after he got a death threat from an adult gang member.

“This is a new twist for us,” guidance counselor Martha Funes said Friday. “I guess it says something about how the times are changing.”

The boy was arrested at school Thursday after an employee saw him hide a .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol behind a garbage bin after wrapping it in a shirt, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Mary Landreth said.

“It was loaded and cocked,” she said. “All you would have had to have done is pull the trigger.”

The boy was booked for investigation of carrying a concealed weapon and taking a loaded firearm to a school campus. He was released to the custody of his mother, deputies said.

School officials said the eighth-grader told them he brought the gun to school after getting the death threat by phone the night before.

Investigators said they did not know how the boy acquired the gun, which did not belong to family members.

School Principal Larry Kennedy said it was only the second time in the four years since the school opened that a weapon had turned up on campus. “We honestly just don’t have many problems here,” he said. “We certainly don’t see this as a trend.”

Kennedy said he had sent an employee to summon the boy to the office on Thursday, after the boy’s gang nickname turned up in graffiti at the school. The employee had seen the boy stash a bundle behind the garbage bin, and found the gun, wrapped in the shirt, the principal said.

Assistant Principal Stephen McCray, one of several school officials who talked with the student in the office, described him as “really a fine kid,” who had been in no serious trouble.

“It’s not hard to understand how he could get a gun, or why he might have felt he needed one, if you know anything about the gang culture,” McCray said. “The boy was obviously frightened that someone wanted to kill him.”

Although many schools in troubled areas use armed security officers to keep order, Lennox has a security force of one--a 27-year-old mother who packs only a walkie-talkie.

“We’re not accustomed to this kind of thing,” said the security guard, Brenda Muse. “After all, you’re talking about sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders.”