Teen brings gun to Berkeley school to “settle” score

March 1, 2011 11:06 am by Frances Dinkelspiel

Berkeley police arrested a 17-year old Oakland youth this morning who brought a gun to Berkeley Technical High School to “settle some type of dispute.”

The principal of B-Tech, as the school is generally called, alerted police at 8:36 am that he had heard reports that the teenager was coming to the school with a gun, according to Sgt. Mary Kusmiss. Apparently the young man, who is a student at B-Tech, was intending to settle a score over a incident that occurred last weekend in Oakland, she said.

The Berkeley police department created a safety perimeter around the school and located the suspect around 8:55 am. He was carrying a loaded semi-automatic pistol, said Sgt. Kusmiss. He was arrested without incident.

Police transported the youth to Alameda County Juvenile Hall where he is being held on charges of carrying a loaded firearm, carrying a concealed weapon, and carrying a gun on school grounds, said Sgt. Kusmiss. Police are not revealing his name because he is a juvenile.

The campus at Martin Luther King Street near Derby was never on lock-down, said Sgt. Kusmiss.

So far this year there have been two other incidents in which students brought guns to Berkeley High, the city’s main high school. B-Tech is the high school for students who have difficulty succeeding at Berkeley High.

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  • Maureen Burke

    I was afraid of that. Thanks Laura. We’ll see how that video gaming curriculum works out for those kids at Realm.

  • Abigail S.

    Ugh (regarding East Bay Express article). All I can say is that it restores my faith in Berkeley that Baggins lost badly. To be honest, I find the tone (not the subject) of this whole conversation to be quite depressing, with a number of comments evoking Arizona, to be frank, but the article certainly explains a lot.

    As a side note, I find it rather absurd that the author has distilled to two single numbers why black students should be content to go to school in Oakland: “black students in Oakland scored marginally better than their counterparts in Berkeley, 603 to 601.” Those are averages that ignore the wide variation amongst Oakland schools, and the percent of students who are actually proficient. Lo and behold, when you look at proficiency for 2010, there are significant discrepancies between OUSD and BUSD in African American students, with Berkeley students doing much better, particularly in math (30% vs. 38%), but ELA as well (31% vs. 33.5%). I’m merely critiquing how the author arrived at a certain conclusion.

    I think it’s time for me to focus my energies on other things now … like homework policies, survey data, and functional SGCs. But this has certainly been enlightening, and far from over I’m sure.

  • laura menard

    Lifelongberkelyan,

    Thanks so much, you made my day. I am currently dealing with even tougher bureaucratic issues as the primary care-partner to my disabled brother, so your praise lifted my spirits. Those who actually know me know that there is not a vain bone in my body, and that I personally paid a very high cost for my efforts as did both my sons.

  • Patricia

    Bravo Berkeleyside for bringing to light another way that Berkeley is robbed to support the political aims of a self righteous few!

    Anyone know of a meeting, petition or other political action being planned to put a stop to this fraud?

  • http://www.berkeleyside.com Lance Knobel

    We’ve had 105 comments on this thread. Many have been very valuable contributions. But I don’t think we’re getting anything new now so we’re closing the thread.

  • ordinaryjoe

    Virginia Tech waiting to happen again, in Berkeley.

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