Tear Gas Tossed Into Gym Sends 85 Students to Hospitals

Eighty-five Azusa High School students were treated at four San Gabriel Valley hospitals Thursday after they suffered the effects of tear gas from a canister that was thrown into a noon student assembly.

All were released by the day’s end after receiving oxygen and medication for burning eyes, nausea, headaches and breathing difficulties, authorities said.

Azusa police said they had no suspects in the incident, which occurred as about 800 students watched “lip-synch” entertainment in the dimly lighted school gymnasium

The canister was thrown to the floor from an upper tier of bleachers.

Students reported that several victims passed out and had to be carried from the gym. Ambulances, police and fire vehicles, school buses and parents’ and teachers’ automobiles were enlisted to transport the victims to hospitals.

Dr. Denis Kollar, head of the emergency department at Queen of the Valley Hospital in West Covina, said none of the 40 victims treated there would suffer permanent injury. He added that tear gas can get into lungs and, in severe cases, could lead to heart failure.

Azusa Unified School District spokesman Kathleen Miller called it “an isolated incident, perhaps a prank,” and not an indication of campus unrest.