Saturday Morning News

El Cajon, California Reels From Recent School Shooting

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Students and parents in the community of El Cajon in southern California are still in shock after another school shooting incident. Police there say an 18-year-old alleged shooter had targeted the vice principal of Granite Hills High School. No one was killed, but it left parents and students very shaken, of course.

CNN's Anne McDermott with that.

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ANNE MCDERMOTT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A kid came to school with a gun again.

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: Oh, my god.

VICTORIA SCRIMIGER, GRANITE HILLS STUDENT: I am so scared it's like, I felt like a sitting duck there.

MCDERMOTT: Once again, students here dropped off flowers and balloons while their parents looked on in bewilderment and wondered where on earth to send their kids to school.

TANYA FLEENER, PARENT: She's college prep. She's an A student and I'm not willing to lose her to some idiot.

LORETTA BENHAM, EL CAJON RESIDENT: I have three nieces and nephews that I foster care and I'm really reluctant even to send them to grade school right now.

MCDERMOTT: People in town went about their business while wondering why.

WENDY CRONKRITE, EL CAJON RESIDENT: Stress, today's society, I guess. I mean it's just with these kids, you know, you just feel really bad for them, what they must be going through.

KEVIN HERSCHELL, EL CAJON RESIDENT: Kids get so stressed out that they have to shoot somebody else. I haven't quite figured it out yet.

MCDERMOTT: Just down the road is Santana High, where in a school shooting earlier this month, two students were killed.

(on camera): Kids here say this latest shooting has left them very, very scared; scared, and grieving for the latest victims.

MATT OPEL, SANTANA HIGH STUDENT: It was, I can't even describe it. It was, I couldn't, I couldn't believe it happened again.

MCDERMOTT: But it did.

Anne McDermott, CNN, El Cajon, California.

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O'BRIEN: To prevent more school violence, police and school authorities are depending on tipsters to alert them to potential threats. But in at least one instance reporting an alleged threat made in a classroom created a big legal problem for a student whistleblower.

In a story you'll see Monday night here on CNN, Charles Feldman explains the dilemma.

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CHARLES FELDMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Kristina Tapia did what school officials across the U.S. are telling students to do -- she told authorities about a possible threat to the safety of her school.

KRISTINA TAPIA, STUDENT WHISTLEBLOWER: I was sitting behind a boy that had, the boy that made the statement. He said we're sick of people, we want to kill them.

FELDMAN: What happened over the next few months has ended up costing the Tapia family tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees.

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O'BRIEN: You can see Charles Feldman's full report about this incident Monday at 10:00 P.M. Eastern Time here on CNN.

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