L.A. Freshman Shot in Butt on Way to School

Panoramio

Walking near L.A. High: bad idea?

Los Angeles High School was on lockdown this morning after a 15-year-old boy from the ninth grade "suffered a penetrating wound in the buttocks" on the walk to school, as the Los Angeles Times so classily puts it.

After being whisked to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the freshman told cops he knows the shooter -- and had, in fact, just gotten in a verbal argument with him before the drive-by shooting.

Los Angeles High School is located in the Mid-City area, on Olympic Boulevard. The 15-year-old was reportedly shot a couple blocks away.

His campus is no longer on lockdown, but LAPD investigators are on a manhunt for a 17-year-old suspect who allegedly shot the freshman while riding with two other guys.

LAPD Sergaent Alfredo Reyes explained the lockdown to the Times: "Whenever we have something like that, we want to be careful. A school should be a safe place."

It's been a big year for guns at LAUSD. A boy at Gardena High shot two classmates (both survived) after bringing a weapon to school in his backpack. Then there was the strange officer-involved shooting at El Camino High that turned out to be a case of psycho school cop. Nearby, non-LAUSD Bell High had a scare later that week.

Update: Kevin Glynn, a longtime teacher at L.A. High, thinks it's funny that this should happen a day after the Times announced that LAPD officers wouldn't be ticketing students for being tardy so much anymore. He says the lockdown was announced over the PA system at about 8:10 a.m., 10 minutes after class started.

According to Glynn, the boy was shot on Rimpau Boulevard.

The high school is on the corner of Olympic and Rimpau. From our own observations, it seems to be one of those some somewhat shoddy campuses, plopped among the L.A. mansions, to which none of the nearby residents actually send their kids.

[@simone_electra/swilson@laweekly.com]