Students, Teachers Stunned by Slaying : Violence: Hollywood High death is attributed to gang shooting. Officials warn that nothing can guarantee safety at schools.

While students and faculty at Hollywood High struggled to make sense Thursday of the latest campus shooting death in Los Angeles, top school and police officials warned that no amount of preparation can guarantee the safety of students from street crime.

Los Angeles school Supt. Sid Thompson had expected to be launching a new anti-crime program when he went to Manual Arts High School on Thursday, but instead he was groping for an explanation for the killing of a student on the lawn outside Hollywood High the previous afternoon.

“If you have this huge campus and a car pulls up, stops, there is a fight, and bang they are gone--I’m sorry, I don’t know of too many things that can preclude that,” Thomspon said, sounding frustrated. “You can’t possibly cover every contingency in a school.”

Rolando Ruiz, 16, who police identified as a gang member, was gunned down by three or four rival gang members who jumped out of their car on busy Highland Avenue, fired one shot after an brief argument and fled, authorities said. No arrests had been made Thursday.

Ruiz had been suspended from school last week for fighting, Hollywood High Principal Jeanne Hon said Thursday. Wednesday had been Ruiz’s first full day of class since returning to the campus, which operates on a year-round schedule.

As friends and family of the slain 10th-grader assembled a makeshift memorial on the grass where Ruiz was shot, Hon called the attack at her school “an assassination.”

The principal said she was outside in front of the campus, which is at Highland Avenue and Sunset Boulevard, while students were leaving for the day when she heard the shot. Hon said she ran to Ruiz, saw the bullet hole in his back and turned him over to start cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

“My first thought was, ‘Oh my God, he’s going to have a severed spine, he’s going to be crippled for life,”’ Hon said. ‘Then I turned him over and blood just rushed out of his eyes. . . . It just breaks your heart.”

The youth’s father, Rolando Ruiz Sr., visited the site of his son’s death Thursday and lit a votive candle at a small memorial set up on the lawn, which included bundles of flowers, candles and a T-shirt bearing the name of Mothers Against Violence in Schools.

“It’s bad--I feel terrible in my heart,” said the 37-year-old postal worker, who came to Los Angeles from Nicaragua eight years ago.

Ruiz, who speaks limited English, said his son “was a good boy. He didn’t want to go outside. Then he goes to high school and someone kills him. Everyday I would worry about him.” He shook his head no when asked if his son was involved in gangs.

Ruiz was the second oldest of four children. Fiorella de la Torre, 16, an acquaintance of Ruiz, said she she did not think he was a gang member. However, a school counselor who has spoken with several of the boy’s friends said that Ruiz, a quiet youth, had been trying to break away from gang affiliations.

“He was a gang member,” said Detective Mike Pasquale of the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Bureau CRASH anti-gang team. “We have him in our files.”

Throughout the day, students on campus displayed a gamut of emotions, from bravado to grief to numbness.

“They were out to get that guy,” said a 16-year-old student who identified herself only as Rosie. “If they didn’t get him by the school they would have gotten him somewhere else. We didn’t know him; what are we supposed to feel?”

School psychiatrist Isabelle Hydoyan said many students who spoke to her Thursday were upset, especially friends of the slain youth. She was not surprised at the stony responses from some.

“These kids are thinking, ‘How do I know if I’m going to be killed, so what difference does it make if I cry about it?”’ Hydoyan said. “Those who appear as if they don’t care--they’re just denying it.”

Others gathered at the memorial, quietly praying. Crisis counselors dispatched to the school said shaken students could be seen hugging and holding hands in the hallways.

“Even though he was not my really close friend, he is still in my heart . . . he is part of my family,” said de la Torre. “I have never experienced anything like this before. . . . No school is safe.”

The girl’s mother agreed.

“I worry and I hope this will not happen again,” said Anita de la Torre. “But it’s like a chain, it just happens and happens and happens.”

At Manual Arts High near the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the occasion for the Thursday morning meeting was the announcement of a new “safe passage” program designed to bolster police patrols and community watch activities around campuses.

The program started at Dorsey High School in the Crenshaw area in the aftermath of a campus shooting on the first day of school last year. In that shooting, an innocent bystander was critically wounded when an argument broke out among other students in a corridor.

Thompson said Thursday that he has directed all schools to adopt safety plans modeled after the Dorsey program. A police substation next to the Dorsey campus is also in the works.