9,000 Los Angeles Students Locked Down After School Officer Shot

**Captain America** · 01-20-11, 11:26 AM

WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. -- A gunman shot a Los Angeles school police officer in the chest Wednesday, prompting an all-day lock-down of a seven-mile area, including nine schools with an estimated 9,000 students, in a vain search for the escaped assailant.

The lock-down dragged on throughout the day, and by the time students were reunited with their parents, it was around 9 p.m. PST. More than 350 officers, including SWAT teams and all LAPD K9 units, walked the mostly residential area for nine hours, searching for a middle-aged man who fired the gunshot a day after two students were shot at another Los Angeles campus. It was the largest search of a single area in memory.

The victim in Wednesday's shooting was Jeffrey Stenroos, an eight-year veteran of a police force that patrols schools within the Los Angeles Unified School District. He was shot multiple times after confronting the suspect, who was believed to have been breaking into cars outside the campus of El Camino Real High School, located in the affluent Los Angeles suburb of Woodland Hills.

One of the bullets hit Stenroos in the middle of the chest and knocked him down, causing his head to strike the pavement, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck told reporters. Luckily, Stenroos was wearing a bulletproof vest. He was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was evaluated and later released with a bruised chest and minor scrapes from the fall.

The shooting happened at 11:40 a.m., just as students were about to break for lunch. An immediate lock-down of that campus and eight others in the vicinity was ordered in case the gunman happened to seek shelter there.

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9,000 Los Angeles Students Locked Down After School Officer Shot