Valley Student Shot in Front of High School

CHATSWORTH —  A Chatsworth High School student was shot three times in front of the campus Wednesday afternoon when he apparently refused to give up his backpack to two robbers, rekindling fears about campus violence that earlier this year led the Los Angeles Unified School District to impose daily weapons searches at all 49 high schools.

The 17-year-old victim was identified by relatives as Gabriel Gettleson, a quiet, hard-working senior who played the guitar for a fledgling heavy metal band. He was shot once in the chest, once in the left shoulder and once in the left hip.

Gabriel underwent surgery at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, where he was pronounced in good condition Wednesday evening, according to police. Police later detained five men for questioning, though they said the five might not have had anything to do with the 1:40 p.m. shooting.

The youth is expected to undergo more surgery today to remove a bullet lodged near his spine, Officer Gary Washburn said. “He is in the intensive-care unit now and he is in excruciating pain, but he will not be paralyzed,” he said.

According to accounts from students and law enforcement sources, Gabriel, who lives in a gated community in Northridge, left school one period early for his work-study job as a filing clerk at a car dealership in Northridge. He was waiting for his mother to pick him up at Lurline Avenue and Vintage Street--a residential neighborhood filled with single-family residences--when two men drove up in a white BMW, according to Detective Mike Brandt.

They demanded Gabriel’s backpack and when he refused to surrender it, one of the men shot him three times and the two attackers fled. A short time later, police stopped a blue Cherokee jeep heading east on Devonshire Street. Brandt said police don’t know if the five men in the jeep were involved, though witnesses reported seeing the vehicle in the area.

The five men were being questioned, but police were not sure they would be charged with anything. As of late Wednesday, the BMW had not been found.

When the victim’s mother arrived shortly after the shooting to drive him to his after-school job, an ambulance already was on the scene.

Several students said they did not believe the boy provoked the attack.

“He was drinking a soda, not doing anything,” said Brian Martinez, 15, a sophomore who was out running near the shooting site, which was next to a brick planter that holds the school sign.

A friend of Gabriel’s family, Gary Washburn, said he was “coming home from lunch with my son and I saw Gabe on the sidewalk. We fought crime in that area really hard. I guess you can’t stop guns.”

The victim was described by several people as quiet and studious. They said he likes to play pool, listen to rock music and is planning to attend Cal State Northridge next year. Noting that Gabriel was on his way to work, Washburn said, “Thats the kind of kid he is. He studies and he works.”

His sister, Renee Gettleson, 15, talked about the irony of her mother preventing Gabriel from playing football. “She said it was too dangerous. And now he gets shot.”

Police said this was the first shooting in the history of the school. But like other secondary schools in the district, Chatsworth had instituted regular metal detector searches for weapons after two campus killings earlier this year, one at Reseda High School. A school official said the searches at Chatsworth had turned up “very, very few” weapons.

Assistant Vice Principal Donna Wyatt said the shooting was announced to the rest of the 2,800 students just before school ended at 2:25 p.m.

“We told them there was a shooting, that the victim was a student, that there were two suspects in custody and that the victim was in stable condition,” Wyatt said.

Since September, Gabriel had earned school credits by working at Competition Chevrolet in Northridge, helping to keep track of the company’s sales and service records. The car dealer’s business manager, Pam Pendleton, described him as an “excellent” employee.

“Just yesterday, we asked if he could work more hours over Christmas and on Saturdays,” she said. “He is just excellent. We have him doing a job that requires a lot of responsibility, and he does the job better than most adults could. He is very intelligent.”

But it was the boy’s sense of responsibility that made him stand out, Pendleton said.

“Over Thanksgiving, I told my grandmother that there was this kid who worked for me who had restored my faith in kids,” Pendleton said. “I told her that I didn’t think there were any high school kids who were still responsible.

“When his mother called and told us he had been shot, we didn’t believe it at first,” she said. “We were in shock.”

According to Ryan Berman, who plays bass in Gabriel’s band, Unseen Servant, there was nothing valuable in the nylon backpack, just a book and note pad.

“It seems like the band is cursed,” Berman said after the shooting. “The singer got into a car accident where there was a fatality.”

Waiting in the hospital Wednesday afternoon as Gabriel underwent surgery, Kimberly Rosenblum, 16--a close friend of Gabriel’s sister--said she is afraid to return to school. “I never thought this could happen,” she said.

Earlier, outside the school, Kevin Krivitsky, 14, expressed similar fears. Kevin said he moved here recently from Palmdale. “I’m not used to this kind of stuff. I’m pretty scared. I don’t know what my mom will say. I guess in this day there’s not any school that’s safe.”

But the 2,800-student Chatsworth campus seemed to have escaped until now the violence that has cropped up at other schools.

“I’ve been here 10 years and there’s never been anything like this before,” Wyatt, the assistant vice principal, said.

Asked whether the shooting was a shock, considering that it occurred in an affluent area not associated with random crime, school board member Mark Slavkin said this is “an example that no one is safe from gun-toting, evil young people out to do damage and kill someone. None of us are immune, and the way we’ll reach solutions is to believe that all of us are at risk.”

Devonshire Division police said they will increase patrols around the campus today. The school district also will send a crisis intervention team to counsel frightened students.

Richard Stalder said he and other teachers who are part of the school leadership group will meet today and may discuss instituting a bell signal that would tell teachers when something has happened on campus to prevent students from pouring onto school grounds when an incident such as this occurs.

But the safety measures the school can take are limited, he said. “What can you do--put a bulletproof vest on everybody?”

Times staff writers Julio Moran, Henry Chu and Chip Johnson contributed to this story.