Valley Star , CA
March 22 2005

High School Riot Closes Child Development Center

Child Development Center faced lockdown when ethnic tensions between
students led to a riot at Grant High School last week.

By Lagina Phillips, Tiffany Farmakis

A brawl at Grant High School forced a lockdown of Valley College’s
Child Development Center, across the street from Grant, sending four
students, two high school faculty members and an LAPD officer to the
hospital for minor injuries.

“The fight was very horrible,” said 15-year-old Grant freshman Mary
Kirishyan. “All you saw was trash cans flying in the air and everyone
running around, it was very scary.”

Grant was under total lockdown for three hours after the noontime
fight between Armenian and Hispanic students erupted into a
full-blown riot involving 200-400 students, according to Deputy
Police Chief Larry Manion.

“Faculty and school administration did a superb job assisting. We
were very happy it ended peacefully,” said Manion. “The worst injury
was when one police officer got hit on the head with a golf ball.”

The Child Development Center, located off Ethel Avenue at the
northeast end of Valley, is only yards away from the high school.
Police notified Terry Teplin, director of the Center, to keep all
children inside while campus police patrolled the college’s
perimeter. Up to 72 children from preschool to 12 years old were at
the Center at the time of the lockdown.

“The preschoolers don’t know what’s going on, but we’ve explained to
the [older] children that some high school students got into a fight
and we are staying inside for safety,” Teplin said. “The police
officers and firemen have been coming in to talk with the children.”

The Child Development Center provides child-care for student-parents
while they attend classes. The center has a well-rounded program for
pre-school to school-aged kids and includes many different indoor and
outdoor group activities.

“We called campus police around 12:30 because we heard helicopters
and we were concerned,” Teplin said.

She was directed to the LAPD, which instructed a lockdown. Children
were escorted outside once their parents arrived, with the last of
the children not being picked up until 10:20 p.m.