Taft School Shooting NOT In L.A.'s San Fernando Valley
Dennis Romero January 10, 2013
Following another school shooting, this one at Taft High School near Bakersfield, the LAPD has had to clarify that this DIDN'T happen at the Taft campus in the San Fernando Valley.
The media is so East Coast-biased (it's not like more than 15 million people live in the area from Bakersfield to Tijuana — more than live in some major countries) that some outlets pointed to Los Angeles as the home of this attack. Nope.
The LAPD has been getting calls on this one. Officer Norma Eisenman says "it's not our incident."
The Daily Beast seems to have f-d it up the worst, initially reporting that "gunfire broke out at Taft High School in the Woodland Hills district of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles … "
The publication appears to have taken that off its site but still says the violence happened in "Kern County, Los Angeles, California."
Um. No.
This Taft High School is in Taft, California, about an hour-and-a-half north of L.A. The incident was being handled by the Kern County Sheriff's Department, which reports:
One student has been shot and airlifted to a Bakersfield hospital. Suspect is a student and is in custody and the weapon has been recovered. Shooting occurred in the Science Building at Taft High School.
Sheriff's officials told reporters at the scene that a 16-year-old student with a shotgun in his hand was arrested this morning after a school administrator persuaded him to surrender.
One other person on campus was said to have been injured.
The confusion over the Taft name inspired the Los Angeles Daily News to publish this headline:
1 student shot at high school in Taft, Calif. — NOT at Taft High in Woodland Hills
[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]
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