A distraught Ontario mother on Friday called for the temporary removal of a vice principal whom she blames for her 14-year-old son's suicide, which she said occurred after he was disciplined for missing class to take part in an immigration rights march on March 26.
Louise Corales said her son, Anthony Soltero, called her shortly before shooting himself to death March 30, saying he was suspended from school and had been told by the vice principal that he was going to jail for three years for skipping school.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday April 18, 2006 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 43 words Type of Material: Correction
Teenager's suicide: An article in Saturday's California section about an Ontario teenager who committed suicide stated that family members said the 14-year-old had been disciplined by a school vice principal after participating in a March 26 immigration protest. The protest was March 27.
Sharon P. McGehee, superintendent of the Ontario-Montclair School District, said there was "no corroborating evidence that the vice principal threatened Soltero with prison." The school district has begun an investigation of the incident.
McGehee said the vice principal told the students who skipped class that they would lose a privilege at the end of the year -- either a field trip or the school dance.
Fellow students and immigration activists will hold a march and rally in downtown Los Angeles this morning to honor the memory of Anthony.
Before a brief news conference with her attorneys Friday morning, Anthony's mother submitted a letter to McGehee asking her to reassign the vice principal at De Anza Middle School, Gene Bennett, so he would not have contact with students while the district's investigation was underway. Attempts to seek comment from Bennett were unsuccessful.
"The vice principal called Anthony into his office and, in front of other students, told Anthony that he would not be allowed to attend graduation functions, that his parents would be fined, and [he] threatened that Anthony would go to jail for three years," his mother said in the letter. "This caused Anthony to be so upset, distraught and overwhelmed that he took his own life."
Ontario police Wednesday night released the boy's suicide note to his family. Samuel Paz, the mother's attorney, said it corroborated the allegations against the vice principal. Paz and the boy's mother have declined to release the note.
"Ninety-nine percent of it is about his family, and how he's so sad to be in this situation," Paz said of the suicide note. "He says something extremely negative about the vice principal, filled with expletives ... the only negative thing about anyone in the note."
"It certainly corroborates what the kids were saying, that this [threat of jail] was the source of his suicide," he said. "Any logical person could make that same conclusion."
