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Family of murdered East Bay teen demands answers about school safety

Contra Costa Times - 2/22/2020

Feb. 21--Frustrated relatives of a teenager fatally shot at Deer Valley High School and other speakers this week urged the Antioch Unified School District to take immediate steps to make the campus safe.

The pleas came during an emotionally charged emergency school board meeting Tuesday in which more than 20 parents, teachers, staff members and other community residents blamed the district and board for failing to act quickly and decisively to ensure safety at the high school both before and since the shooting.

Jonathon Parker, 16, was fatally wounded during a fight after a boys' basketball game in the school's parking lot Jan. 31 and died a day later. Though police were not on duty at the school before the shooting that night, the district said there was security. Police have not announced any suspects or arrests.

"I don't even understand why it takes someone to get murdered for this (safety discussion) to even happen; this should have been going on continuously throughout the year," Parker's aunt, Margarita Gurule, told the board. "Every day you should be concerned for kids' safety -- not even just the kids, but the teachers, the parents."

Family members sought answers about the shooting, saying they've heard little from anyone.

"These kids were allowed to jump and kill him, why did you not have the proper security?" asked Aurora Solorio, another of Parker's aunts.

"This didn't have to happen," added Parker's cousin, high school senior Andrew Hackett. "He had good grades. He never did nothing to hurt anybody. He always had a smile on his face... The one night we needed you guys you were not to be found."

The board had called for the emergency meeting at Antioch High School to discuss the district's comprehensive school safety plans -- not specifically Deer Valley High -- a fact that did not sit well with some following a one-hour presentation on safety programs at other local schools.

"I think we need to address the (Deer Valley) issue," Trustee Crystal Sawyer-White said.

She noted the district has designated more than $1 million for school security services at its campuses, yet no mental health workers were sent to Deer Valley High after the shooting.

Trustee Ellie Householder said she was "disappointed" that campus safety wasn't on the agenda for the board's last regular meeting and blamed Trustee Diane Gibson-Gray for the oversight, at one point calling for her resignation as board president.

But Trustee Mary Rocha stressed that the board and others need to "work together." She said school resource officers were cut during the economic downturn more than 10 years ago and the district is still trying to restore the positions.

Many of the parents, teachers and others gathered at Beede Auditorium expressed their impatience, however, asking what safety measures are specifically being taken now at Deer Valley, where a preschool also operates.

"One child being killed at an Antioch school is one too many," Mary Lynne Peck said. "I'm very disturbed that the response is so mediocre. ... We do not send our children to be in danger and to be killed at a basketball game."

Parent Michael LeMonds, who went to Deer Valley High the night of the shooting to pick up his two daughters following the game, described a chaotic scene of panicked students climbing fences and trying to escape inside but finding only locked doors.

"(They) were running anywhere that they could away from the scene. I didn't see any supervision of any kind -- just panicked parents," LeMonds said.

But Bob Scudero, who is with Deer Valley High's site security, said four security employees were on the campus that night, as were staff and administrators.

Scudero said as the shots rang out, he pulled at least 10 children and parents to safety and locked them inside a room before briefly leaving to rescue one teen's panicked brother trapped behind a fence.

"All I knew is I went into action the way that all of us at Deer Valley are trained," he said. "I want the public to know that as large as that school is, there is no possible way that we could have covered that whole lot," he said. "I believe that there should have been police there too."

Deer Valley counselor Emily Woodall asked the district to reconsider its allocation of resources, noting the school does not have mental health professionals or peer mediators or restorative justice programs like those touted in the earlier presentation.

"I am here to fight for the needs of our students because we are all grieving," she said. "They are grieving the loss of innocence of their childhood and some are grieving the loss of safety, and with all the grief and trauma, they still show up and we expect them to show up as if none of this has happened."

One parent, Courtney Campbell-Reich, noted that several violent incidents previously occurred this year at Deer Valley High, including an after-football-game brawl and an assault on volunteers.

"On Jan. 31 our worst fear has become a reality," Campbell-Reich said. "We as a community need to address this together. I'm not interested in playing the blame game. We need action and results. Collectively, we need to look at how we can prevent this from ever happening again."

Deer Valley High School Principal Olubukola "Bukky" Oyebade said she has reflected many times about security on the night of the shooting.

"We doubled the amount of security that night, we did everything we needed to do. ..... I acknowledge there is nothing I could ever say that would bring John John back, but I think it's important for you to know there was security that night. I apologize for his loss."

Trustee Householder also apologized. "No excuses. I'm sorry and we need to do better."

"This is an ongoing investigation," Gibson-Gray concluded. "The superintendent is working closely with the police. We want to find out who murdered Jonathon as much as you do, and if any of the kids, adults.... hears anything, I beg you to share it with police because someone is out there who needs to be caught."

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