200 Students in Melee at High School : Racial unrest: Hawthorne classes are canceled after fight between a black and a Latino sets off brawl. There are no serious injuries.

A fight between a black youth and a Latino youth at Hawthorne High School on Friday erupted into a racially tinged melee that involved more than 200 students, spilled onto neighboring streets and forced school officials to cancel classes, authorities said.

The brawl was the second in less than two months in the Centinela Valley Union High School District, which has been plagued by racial tensions among students, teachers, administrators and board members over the past year. In April, dozens of Leuzinger High School students battled in the wake of a fight between a black girl and a Latino girl on the Lawndale campus.

Fighting at the Hawthorne school on Friday broke out in the center of campus shortly before 11 a.m. after a 16-year-old Latino student hit a 17-year-old black student with a pipe, said Hawthorne city spokesman Tom Quintana. Within minutes, dozens of students joined in the brawl.

“As I understand it, one student hit one, maybe two others, with a pipe,” Quintana said. “All of a sudden, it grew from there with a whole bunch of kids fighting and shoving. Eventually, there were a couple hundred kids, at least, who were fighting, running, getting caught up in the whole thing.”

School officials dismissed classes about 11:30 a.m. as about two dozen police officers from Hawthorne, El Segundo, Manhattan Beach and Gardena surrounded the area. Although store owners reported seeing students fighting in the streets, there were no reports of property damage or serious injuries, Quintana said.

“From what I understand, it started (Thursday) off school grounds over a backpack,” said Centinela school board President Pam Sturgeon. “It carried over into (Friday) morning.”

Police booked the 16-year-old, a suspected gang member, on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and released him to his parents, Hawthorne Police Sgt. Henry Mashack said. One youth was treated for minor head injuries at Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center and sent home.

Police and city officials said they did not know what sparked the fight. But Hawthorne 11th-grader Bryan Harper said racial tensions were partly to blame for the fracas. He suggested that the brawling came as a pay-back for another fight the day before in which a group of Latino gang members attacked a black gang member. When the victim’s brother and friends confronted the Latino students at school Friday, “they didn’t like the way we came at them and started throwing punches,” Harper said.