One suspect arrested after shooting outside high school
By: John Upton
June 15, 2009
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| Police officers investigate the site of a shooting that occurred in front of International Studies Academy in the Potrero neighborhood on Monday afternoon. (Cindy Chew/The Examiner) |
SAN FRANCISCO — Three young people were treated for injuries today following an afternoon shooting outside a Potrero Hill high school.
A group of girls had just joined several boys at 1:20 p.m. outside International Studies Academy at 18th and De Haro streets, as summer classes were ending. Suddenly, five or six shots were fired into the crowd, according to witnesses.
The shots sounded like they were fired from a handgun, witnesses said.
After the shooting, teachers held the front doors of the school open while panicked students flooded inside, according to witnesses.
One suspect was arrested after the shooting and two guns were recovered, according to police spokeswoman Sgt. Lyn Tomioka.
The two male victims and one female victim were young, possibly juveniles, and they were all expected to survive injuries to the lower parts of their bodies, according to Tomioka.
The victim who sustained the most serious injuries was a male in his late teens who was shot in the foot and buttocks, according to Cheeko Wells, a member of the advocacy group Brothers Against Guns, who was inside the school at the time. The boy was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, and it was the second time in two years that he had been shot, Wells said.
Trouble often brews when students from different schools attend summer session in an unfamiliar neighborhood, he said, as was the case today. “A lot of these kids are scared,” Wells said.
Also, a female student’s leg was grazed either by a bullet or a rock. She went home and alerted her father, according to San Francisco Unified School District spokeswoman Gentle Blythe.
Both male victims are not associated with the school or with the summer session, according to Blythe.
Summer school is scheduled to resume at the campus Tuesday, Blythe said.
Examiner Staff Writer Will Reisman contributed to this report.
