A parent learned of the Westchester campus lockdown from a frightened child before any official alert reached families.
The Los Angeles School Police Department took a student into custody around 12:30 p.m. Monday after a knife-wielding teen punched and chased another boy through the shared quad of Westchester Enriched Sciences Magnets high school and WISH Academy charter school, sending screaming students running for safety. The attacked student suffered only a minor cut, school officials said.
“It was a big knife,” student Kaylin Lewis told KTLA. “When the knife was pulled out, I just ran away. The whole thing was surreal.”
Lewis was among dozens caught in the chaos as the armed boy prowled the grounds during a shelter-in-place order. Fellow student Kaylani Bates described conflicting early rumors about motive. “We heard it was rivalry gangs, but we’re not really sure what happened,” Bates told KTLA. “There were a lot of people chasing him.”
The delayed and incomplete parent notification became its own flashpoint. One parent told KTLA a child was trapped alone in a hallway, unable to enter a locked classroom during the emergency. “To have a child locked in a hallway by himself, unable to get into a classroom because it’s a lockdown and you can’t reopen the door? That’s insane because anything could’ve happened to that kid in the hallway,” the parent said.
The same parent added that students on an athletic field faced equal vulnerability. “People on the field, same thing. This guy with the knife could’ve been chasing after all of them. To not know what’s going on and to have your son or daughter call you before the school does, it’s really scary to know he had to go through that alone.”
The Los Angeles Unified School District issued a statement emphasizing that students and staff were safe, no one was injured, and no ongoing threat remained. Instruction resumed normally, the district said, with additional Los Angeles School Police Department patrols added around the campus out of caution.
“Please know that we take any incident involving student safety extremely seriously,” the district continued. “The safety and well-being of our students and staff remain our highest priority, and we will continue to work closely with law enforcement and District personnel to maintain a safe learning environment.”
The confrontation erupted when one teen approached the knife-wielding boy in the campus quad, footage showed. The armed student punched the other boy and gave chase as screams spread through the area.