Drive-by kills freshman

An after-school drive-by shooting near Palo Verde High School on Friday left a freshman boy dead in the first local school-related slaying of a student since 2000.

Police, who were searching for four suspects late Friday, were uncertain whether the ninth-grader was targeted or whether the shooting was random.

Classes had been over for about 20 minutes, and students were spilling into surrounding neighborhoods when shots rang out a few hundred yards from the Summerlin high school.

Las Vegas police said the boy was walking with a group of students east along Alta Drive, just east of Pavilion Center Drive, when four people in a four-door car pulled alongside them and fired several shots about 1:45 p.m.

Only the boy was hit, police said. He was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Police said three males and one female were in the car, which was described as being silver or gold with faded paint. The car might have damage to the front end.

"It's going to be a long night here, and we've got a lot of people to talk to," said Las Vegas police Capt. Randy Montandon.

The brazen shooting on the manicured street shattered the tranquility of the normally quiet master-planned community. Marked and unmarked police cars dotted surrounding neighborhoods.

"This is a great neighborhood," 44-year-old Demetrias Scott said as a handful of Metropolitan Police Department gang unit officers walked past. "We don't see that around here."

"This is weird -- at Palo, especially," Palo Verde sophomore Kaytie Hao'kaawaloa said.

Shortly after the shooting, Rogich Middle School, just north of Palo Verde, was placed on lockdown, preventing students from leaving their rooms. The school got out on time at 2:11 p.m.

"I heard kids talking in the hallways about someone getting shot," 14-year-old eighth-grader Dane Lindquist said.

Throughout the day, a few passers-by on Pavilion Center stopped to stare at the crime scene and the television news trucks just outside it.

Palo Verde senior Randy Jacobson stood on the corner near the high school after his track and field practice was canceled.

"I never hear about stuff happening like this around here," the 18-year-old said quietly.

The police presence continued into the evening.

Before a girls regional basketball championship game at the campus Friday evening, Las Vegas police Capt. Terry Mayo addressed the fans, asking anyone to contact police if they heard anything about the shooting.

Mayo encouraged students to use technology, including social networking Web sites such as MySpace, to find out what happened and to contact police with any information.

The shooting left School Board Member Terri Janison shaken, wishing for a way to protect all students from harm, door-to-door, every day. Her daughter will attend Palo Verde next year.

An incident like this underscores the need for a community-based response to what is a community-wide problem, she said.

"There'd better be a dialogue, and it should have started yesterday," said Janison, who spent Friday taking calls from Palo Verde parents shocked by the fatal drive-by shooting.

All high schools have school police officers who can respond to incidents during the day and follow up on student reports of weapons or fighting on campus. But the district has no control over what happens on city streets, when students are coming from or going to school, Janison said.

December's school bus stop shooting is a classic example, she said.

The worst mass shooting in district history happened on city streets, at Walnut and Alexander roads. Nicco Tatum, 18, was arrested and faces charges related to wounding six people, including four Mojave High School students.

"I don't think this is just a district situation," Janison said. "I think it's a community problem."

The last murder of a school district student on or near school property was in February 2000. Seventeen-year-old Western High School student Samuel Larios was killed in a drive-by shooting as he exited a car on Yale Street, near Decatur Boulevard and Washington Avenue. The shooting took place at 1:35 p.m., shortly after the school day ended.

In 1996, Bonanza High School student Joie Muth, 14, was shot and killed in a nighttime schoolyard ambush involving gang members at Pittman Elementary School.

Palo Verde has a reputation for being one of the safer schools in the Clark County School District's Northwest region. The 3,400-student high school has one of the lower rates for expulsions in the region.

In the 2006-07 school year, the school made 46 referrals for expulsion. This year, the school has made 21 referrals for expulsion.

"The majority of referrals for expulsion are drugs- or weapons-related," Associate Superintendent of Education Services Edward Goldman said. "They would also include threats or violence to others."

Other Northwest region schools struggled with higher numbers of students who committed expellable offenses last year: Cimarron-Memorial High School referred 102 students for expulsion; Western High School made 89 referrals; Shadow Ridge High School had 53; and Centennial High School had 52.

The Northwest region high school with the lowest rate of referrals for expulsion in 2006-07 was Arbor View, with 26.

Police are encouraging people with information on the crime to call them at 828-2281.

Review-Journal writers Brian Haynes and Jon Gold contributed to this report. Contact reporter Lawrence Mower at lmower@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0440.