Black Students Skip Classes After Racially Charged Graffiti Found At Agoura High School
AGOURA HILLS (CBSLA.com) — Some students skipped classes Thursday morning after racially charged graffiti targeting African Americans was discovered on the walls of Agoura High School.
The remarks, which included "Go back 2 Africa," were first spotted over the weekend, but were removed by administrators before classes Monday.
On Wednesday, the names of five black students that would be the "first to die" were written on a bathroom wall.
"I was shocked to see my name first on the list," a student told KCAL9's Amy Johnson.
Student Danielle Desire said her boyfriend didn't come to school when he found out he was on the "hit list."
"It's scary to know that my boyfriend's life is at risk," she said. "He's really nervous. It's scary."
Parent Jeffrey Jones said he kept his daughter at home even though she wasn't threatened.
"I think the danger is here on campus. I don't want to be one of those parents who regretted sending my daughter to school and something goes wrong," he said.
Jones, however, went to the campus himself to look for answers.
"No one called us, no one informed us of anything," he said.
Principal Larry Miser said the school eventually sent out emails to the parents Wednesday.
"Looking back, looking how to better approach this, I think what took us a bit of time was trying to figure out exactly what we had here," he said.
The principal also said he's not convinced it's a racially motivated crime.
"Sunday afternoon, we started getting some indication this wasn't just simply a hate-type crime…that there may be other ulterior motives…that it wasn't a racial thing that was going on here, but a motivation for someone to get what they wanted. Normally we put this out very quickly to our people, but because of the sensitive nature of where we were going with this, we wanted to take our time," said Misel.
Investigators said two to three suspects were caught on camera in connection to the incident. They will now look into those images.
"There is security surveillance that was videotaped and we have that in our possession," said Capt. Patrick Davoren of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
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