Student Wounded When Gun Discharges in Boys’ ‘Horseplay’

A student at a Roman Catholic high school in Gardena was shot by a friend in a freak accident Wednesday afternoon when a gun accidentally discharged while several students were “horsing around” in a parked car, Gardena police said.

The teen-age boys--whose names were withheld--then lied to authorities and said their friend was a victim of a drive-by shooting, police said. They later changed their story.

No charges have been filed in the case, police said.

One student is in serious but stable condition at County Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, police said. Two others have been suspended from Serra High School and face a disciplinary hearing with their parents next week, said Principal James Crowell.

“The students will be dealt with rather severely by the school,” Crowell said. He called the incident “a very isolated, rare thing” that has never happened in the school’s 40-year history.

Crowell said he explained the shooting to students over the school’s public address system Thursday morning and told them “that this is not what we expect from our students.”

Police said the automatic pistol accidentally fired after falling from a student’s jacket pocket while they were “horsing around” about 2:30 p.m. near the high school at 14830 Van Ness Ave. When the student with the gun picked up the weapon, the victim pushed it away and accidentally deactivated the safety release. The gun then fell to the floor and discharged.

“It wasn’t really a shooting as you think of a shooting,” Crowell said Thursday.

He acknowledged that the incident was serious, but bristled at the publicity the 265-student religious school is receiving because of the shooting.

“If this happened two miles away, the school would not have entered into it. If the gun had not fallen down and discharged and hit the student, nobody would have known,” he said.