For the third time in six weeks, police broke up a Jefferson High School brawl Thursday that students say was fueled by racial tension.
Officers from the Los Angeles School Police Department used pepper spray and batons to quell the fight, which involved about 25 students on the South Los Angeles campus. The police arrested three students and detained more than 20 others, authorities said.
The incident reportedly began when two students argued about a cellphone. Students said that altercation sparked larger fights between black and Latino students across the campus.
"It started in the cafeteria, and then it spread out to the PE field, to the auditorium, to the hallways, everywhere. I saw some people run out of the classrooms just to get into the fight," said Salvador Ingles, a 17-year-old senior. "Like with the last two fights, it happened that brown people, they go to one side, then black people go to the other side, and then they both collide."
School officials also reported two separate fights at Los Angeles High School, Thursday. The brawls attracted several hundred onlookers and prompted a brief campus lockdown while two students were detained. No serious injuries were reported.
"I'm told there were some racial overtones" to the violence, district spokeswoman Susan Cox told the Associated Press.
The melee at Jefferson High School began about 12:40 when two Latino students argued about the phone, officials said. Administrators ordered a lockdown of the campus, and students were released from school about 600 at a time two hours later. The school nurse treated dozens of students for minor abrasions, and two students who were not involved in the fight were treated for hyperventilation. Six officers received minor injuries.
The fight occurred on the eve of a planned Day of Dialogue that district officials scheduled after similar brawls April 14 and April 18.
Although students and parents have complained that the fights have had heavy racial overtones, Jefferson Principal Norm Morrow denied those assertions Thursday.
"It had nothing to do with race," he said of the brawl. "The majority of our kids are good kids. We've got to get people to understand that some kids aren't here for the right reason."
Nevertheless, Morrow said that the campus was experiencing problems and that he expected many parents would keep their children home today.
