El Modena High Student Arrested in Campus Assault

A 16-year-old El Modena High School student was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of assaulting a fellow student on campus the day before, authorities said. The victim, also a 16-year-old sophomore, suffered fractured facial bones after being hit in the face, Orange police said.

The suspect was arrested at his home in Yorba Linda and released to his parents at their residence. A police spokesman said the case will be turned over to the Orange County district attorney’s office.

The assault happened Tuesday afternoon in the school parking lot, police said. Words were exchanged and the victim, Justin Collins, was punched in the face, said Orange Police Lt. Jim Hudson. Justin’s family notified police, he said.

Physical attacks on Orange County campuses are not uncommon, education officials said, but the injuries in this case were extreme. The incident substantiates recent concern about campus bullying; the victim’s father said Justin had been targeted by the assailant because he and several other students had stopped the boy from bullying another youth weeks before.

“He singled out my son as [the one] he was going to go after,” Robert Collins of Orange said. His son was threatened several times before the attack, Collins said.

Justin, who will undergo surgery for his injuries, said he never told school officials about the threats. “I just didn’t want other students to say anything like, ‘Why are you telling on him?’ or something like that.” Besides, he said, “I thought it would just blow by.”

Nancy Murray, principal at El Modena, said Thursday that she could not comment on individual student disciplinary actions. She said she was not on campus Tuesday and was unaware of any El Modena student being injured.

Orange County schools reported 719 incidents of battery in the 1999-2000 school year, according to the annual California Safe Schools Assessment survey. But Georgiann Boyd, a coordinator of student services for the county Department of Education, said, “These kinds of severe injuries are not the norm in Orange County.”