GILROY
– Police and school officials are still trying to piece together
exactly what fueled a confrontation resulting in a 13-year-old
firing several rounds from a pellet gun into a group of Gilroy High
School students Wednesday morning on a crowded street across from
the high school.
GILROY – Police and school officials are still trying to piece together exactly what fueled a confrontation resulting in a 13-year-old firing several rounds from a pellet gun into a group of Gilroy High School students Wednesday morning on a crowded street across from the high school.
Although no one was seriously injured in the incident on Princevalle Street near Glenview Court, school personnel remain on a heightened level of security today while the gun-toting juvenille faces charges of felony assault with a deadly weapon. If convicted, the boy could be sentenced to two to four years in juvenile hall and up to a $10,000 fine, according to police.
Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Ralph Dixon said this morning that his office had not yet received police reports to review for formal charges, but expected them later today.
Police say the incident was not gang-related.
“The part we’re really looking into is what happened to spark this confrontation,” GHS Principal Bob Bravo said Wednesday after school. “At first the kids were telling us it was random, but now it sounds like there had been a previous confrontation earlier in the morning.”
Police are not releasing the name or booking status of the suspect because he is a juvenile, but they did confirm the boy is not enrolled in any district school and that lives near Gilroy High School.
“I suspect he was on his way to school himself,” Gilroy Police Department Cpl. Ronnie Georges said.
The school’s eight security guards were warned to be extra-vigilant throughout the day and again today, although police do not plan any increased patrols near the school. Rumors of the incident quickly spread throughout Gilroy High Wednesday morning, but overall, nerves were calm, Bravo said.
“I didn’t even know about it until my teacher read about it to my class from the sheet the principal gave her,” said Gary Velasco, a 15-year-old GHS sophomore. “It doesn’t seem like that big a deal – no one was really hurt. It also really seemed like they were stressing that it was a non-student (who fired the gun).”
Gilroy Unified School District Superintendent Edwin Diaz met with Bravo and District Safety Officer Roger Cornia at the high school Wednesday afternoon to discuss how the school should handle the incident.
As a result of the meeting, each school staff member was asked to read a prepared statement to their students explaining the incident shortly before the first bell rang at 8 a.m. Wednesday. Parents on the school’s e-mail list also were delivered the statement.
“We wanted to get the facts out there and dispel any rumors that the gun was real,” Diaz said. “Hopefully the kids will get the message to their parents.”
Bravo and other administration members plan to meet again today with the seven Gilroy High School students involved in the incident, and depending on the outcome, suspensions might be handed down, Bravo said.
“We’ll have to see how the stories evolve,” he said.
The confrontation began shortly before 8 a.m. Wednesday when a group of four male and one female Gilroy High students met up with a group comprised of the gunman, a district student who does not attend GHS and two female GHS students, according to police.
After a brief exchange of words, the 13-year-old brandished the gun from his pants and fired six to seven rounds into the group from a close distance, grazing two students’ pants with pellets and hitting another near the ankle, according to police. The pistol contained an air cartridge, making it more powerful than most BB guns, police said.
Following the gunshots, school supervisors in the area immediately alerted Mike Terasaki, the Gilroy Police Department’s resource officer at the school. Terasaki quickly questioned witnesses on the crowded street just east of the school and minutes later apprehended the suspect on Glenview Court, where he had hidden the gun underneath a parked car.
Five police units and an ambulance responded to the scene. The victim of the shooting, a GHS freshman, was treated at the scene and then taken by his parents to get the pellet logded in his ankle removed.
“From the time when I heard there was a suspect with a weapon, he was in custody within five minutes,” Bravo said. “I’m very proud of our response and the police department’s response.”
Bravo – who has only been at the school since August – said this was the first incident involving a weapon he had seen at or near the school, but he did admitt that non-students loitering near the school are a perpetual concern.
In 1995, a 14-year-old Gilroy High student was stabbed to death by a 16-year-old student on the GHS campus during a gang-related dispute resulting in the closure of the campus.
In an effort to diminish the number of non-students in the area near the high school the GPD regularly patrols the area before and after school, Bravo said, and those patrols are not expected to change.
“We have very good patrol in that area regardless,” Georges said. “Nothing about (Wednesday’s) incident would raise a red flag otherwise.”
Staff Writers Dave Steffenson and Jonathan Jeisel contributed to this story.
