Teen Shot at School Track Meet in Reseda

RESEDA —  Athletes and spectators at a Cleveland High School track meet were sent diving for cover Friday as a fistfight led to gunfire and an 18-year-old Panorama City man was shot in the face.

Ray Rice was taken to Northridge Hospital Medical Center and is expected to survive, Los Angeles police said. His condition was not immediately available. The bullet plowed alongside one cheek, hitting some teeth, a police sergeant at the scene said.

Rice’s cousin, Jason Folse, 19, said he and Rice were walking away from the track meet when three young men followed them from the stands.

Words were exchanged and a fistfight started, Folse said. “Then I heard one of the guys yell, ‘Just shoot the fools!’ ”

Folse said he heard a shot, looked up and saw a handgun pointed in his direction. “I just hit the ground,” he said. “Then I looked over and saw my cousin was shot.”

His hands covered in dried blood, Folse described how he applied direct pressure to Rice’s wound.

“They told me he was going to be OK,” the Pierce College student said. “But I need to see him for myself.”

Police released few details about the 4:30 p.m. shooting, which occurred on a service road in the middle of the Cleveland High campus off Strathern Street. Folse said the attackers yelled a gang affiliation as they fled in a green Ford Mustang. He said neither he nor Rice, who attends West Valley Occupational Center, are gang members, and that they did not know their attackers.

“I don’t know what this is about,” he said. “I guess things just happen.”

The shooting occurred near the end of a track meet between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Granada Hills Highlanders, said Allan J. Weiner, assistant principal of Cleveland High School.

Weiner said he and the school athletic director shouted at students to “get down” in the chaotic moments after the gunshots. Weiner said he also helped give Rice first aid before calling 911.

Weiner said counseling would be available Monday for students who saw the shooting and were having trouble dealing with it.

“This is very, very unfortunate,” Weiner said. “This is such a quiet neighborhood and quiet campus.”

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Times staff writer Claire Vitucci contributed to this story.