Star Student Is Killed Day Before His Graduation : Violence: Paramount High athlete is shot to death at a McDonald’s after refusing to turn over CD player to robbers.

Alfred Clark was at the zenith of a stellar senior year. A star football player, a record-setting sprinter on the track team and a popular honors student, the ever-smiling Clark was expecting to graduate Thursday night from Paramount High School and enroll this fall at UCLA as a scholarship winner.

But on Wednesday, just after picking up his cap and gown, Clark became yet another apparent victim of gang violence when he was shot to death while having lunch in a crowded McDonald’s restaurant near the campus on Rosecrans Avenue, police said.

Clark, 17, was shot once in the chest after refusing to surrender a portable CD player to two robbers--both suspected gang members--who ran from the restaurant and fled in a van, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Rich Erickson said.

The shooting--witnessed by dozens of students, many of whom ran screaming for safety--left authorities searching for suspects and cast a pall over graduation exercises. Clark was perhaps the preeminent student athlete at the school, which is about 10 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles.

“He was truly an all-American young man--the kind of young man any parent would be proud to have, and the kind we were proud to have at Paramount High School,” said Douglas Martin, personnel director for the Paramount Unified School District. “Society was robbed when he was taken.”

For scores of students, the slaying turned graduation day into a solemn, emotional time in which the exhilaration of personal accomplishment was put aside to remember a fallen classmate. In Seniors Square--a patch of ground where graduates traditionally write their names in concrete--bouquets of roses and carnations were placed in Clark’s honor along with balloons and photographs.

Hand-drawn signs on a nearby wall paid tribute to his popularity and sense of humor.

“Alfred, I still see you covered in sunlight with your ready smile and your ready laugh,” a friend named Ras wrote. “I still see you crossing the finish line in victory, the track baton in your hand. I still see you receiving your principal’s award for academic achievement. You have it all: brains, athletic talent, a beautiful soul.”

During graduation rehearsals, students read short poems and dedicated songs to Clark, while the strains of slow march music filtered over campus like a dirge.

“I tried not to cry, but it was just so sad, I did--I couldn’t hold it,” classmate Norma Sandoval, 17, said afterward. Sitting on a curb outside the McDonald’s where Clark was shot, Sandoval remembered him as funny--an incessant jokester who had no enemies.

“He always cheered you up,” she said. “He was always singing something--anything he heard on the radio.”

Yolanda Perez, 17, said Clark was the type who would see someone looking depressed and come over to offer encouragement, even a hug. He sometimes hung around in Seniors Square, nagging the young women about how they gossiped too much.

“He always had a smile,” Perez said. “He’d call us ladies. He’d say: ‘How are you ladies doing today?’ ”

As a football player, Clark had been a starting wide receiver and a reserve defensive back. As a track athlete, he had run the 100- and 200-meter dashes and the anchor leg on the sprint relay team. In the 200 meters and the relays, he had set or shared five school records and he was voted the most valuable performer in varsity track, according to one scholarship application.

“He was very, very fast,” one classmate said.

In addition to his athletic achievements, Clark maintained a 3.5 grade-point average while participating in a program for gifted black students run by Cal State Dominguez Hills, Martin said. He was a member of the high school’s Science Club and had traveled to Washington a year ago to learn about government as a Congressional youth representative.

“He was a role model for me,” said Jason Dale, 15, a hurdler and high jumper on the track team. “I wanted to be just like him, to run just as fast as he did.”

Terran McClendon, 18, who played with Clark on the football team, said he was “only serious in the classroom. Of all the people at McDonald’s, why did they have to pick Alfred?”

At commencement ceremonies Thursday evening, students cheered as Clark’s parents, Luis and Agnes, accepted his diploma.

A song, “Lessons to Be Learned,” was dedicated to Clark. Doves were set free in his memory before Principal Maureen Sanders told the cheering crowd, “You are now officially graduates of Paramount High School.”

Sheriff’s deputies said it remains unknown whether the assailants were Paramount students. The shooting occurred about 11:40 a.m. Wednesday as Clark sat with several friends having lunch, deputies said. The two suspects--described as male Latinos in their late teens or early 20s--exchanged words with the group before one of them demanded Clark’s CD player.

“After the victim refused to submit, the suspect shot him,” Deputy Erickson said. “The suspects left the restaurant and one of them turned around and fired at least twice into the restaurant. But no one was injured or struck by those two shots.”

Police interviewed many witnesses, including Clark’s friends, but were searching late Thursday for as many as 15 more witnesses who had fled during the incident. One of those witnesses is believed to have chased the men before they drove off in a van, Erickson said.

One student who saw part of the incident was a junior who played varsity football with Clark. The 16-year-old said he was approaching the McDonald’s that morning when he heard three shots and froze in terror. Later, entering the restaurant, he saw Clark on the floor crying out in pain. There were so many people around him, some crying, that he could not get close, the student said.

“He was still alive,” he said. “Then police told us to leave.”

Clark was taken to a local hospital but died about noon, police said.

On Thursday, the McDonald’s closed after serving breakfast and put its flag at half-staff. A note was taped to the speaker box leading to the drive-through window: “Our deepest sympathy goes out to the family members and friends of Alfred Clark. As a concerned community member, we have decided to close the restaurant in his memory.”