"There was blood everywhere ... all in the hallways."
The Western High School teacher is describing the scene around noontime Friday when isolated clashes between black and Hispanic students erupted into a melee that spilled off campus and ultimately required police intervention to quell.
"One kid's face was shredded; they put his face against a locker and raked it across," one student told the Weekly, his hands mimicking the motion of cheese being grated.
"If you were black, they hit you," says another student of the Hispanic participants.
Another youth described black students ganging up on anyone who looked Latino.
"This has been brewing for months," he adds.
At one point, students claim, the brawl grew to nearly 100 people, spreading to a nearby AM PM convenience store where black and Hispanic youth were set to square off before cops dispersed the crowd with mace. A clerk at the AM PM convenience store at Washington and Decatur confirmed the account.
Calls to Western High School weren't returned by press time.
Notified of the fight by the Weekly, Clark County School District spokesman Darnell Couthen initially declined comment, saying simply that "fights do happen." Couthen called back and confirmed the altercation: "There was a fight there, but the number (of participants appeared) larger than it actually was because of the crowd watching the fight. About eight citations were issued for the disturbance of the school. And I'm not aware of any racial implications."
A probation officer in the county's juvenile detention center says Couthen's response is to be expected—there's no need to demonize an entire school because of one incident and no need to cause undue worry. "But if I was a parent," he says, "I'd be pissed."
As the P.O. sees it, school officials and law enforcement should fret. Tensions between black and Hispanic gangs have been on the rise since the deaths of Benito Zambrano-Lopez and Joseph Muniz, the source says, and could come to loggerheads this summer, when school's out and idle time is at a premium.
On June 8, 2003, Zambrano-Lopez was beaten and fatally shot on his way back from a grocery store near Rancho and Vegas drives. Julius Bradford, Steven Perry and Tyrone Williams are serving 40 years to life on robbery and murder charges. Cops say the trio gunned down the 48-year-old day laborer after he resisted their robbery attempts.
One law-enforcement official who attends weekly gang intelligence meetings organized by local authorities says the area near Rancho and Vegas has become a battleground for black gang members trying to ward off Hispanic toughs.
Metro Gang Crimes Det. Patrick Perns cites Cindysue Street, northeast of Rancho and Vegas, as an example. The one-time home of Cindysue Crips, a black street gang, the neighborhood is now predominantly Hispanic. On a recent afternoon, dozens of young Hispanic men loiter in the parking lot of Twin Lakes Elementary.
"An overpopulation of Hispanics will usually send blacks elsewhere and vice versa," Perns says. "Look at Cindysue and the area near Lally's Bar (on Rancho, between Vegas and Lake Mead Boulevard). Sometimes, lots of tension results."
Sources also say Joseph Muniz's death stoked racial embers. Muniz died in a July 13, 2004, riot at High Desert State Prison in Indian Springs, 45 minutes north of Las Vegas. Nearly 200 black and Hispanic inmates brawled for 20 minutes in a recreation yard. When it was over, Muniz, a former Western High School student, lay dead. (Prison officials and inmates disagreed over the cause of death; the former saying Muniz was punched and the latter saying his skull was crushed by a blunt object, most likely one of the large rocks littering the compound. Corrections officers had warned administrators that inmates could use the rocks, some as long as 10 inches in diameter, as weapons. They've since been removed.) Muniz was serving 25 years for second-degree murder in the May 1997 gang-related slaying of Marco Valdez at Lorenzi Park on Rancho and Washington.
The county probation officer suspects the Western High fight stems from racial tension at High Desert.
"Word has come down (from gang leaders in prison) to settle disputes in the streets," he claims. "They can't do anything inside because they're always being locked down."
Calls to the Nevada Department of Prisons and High Desert about ethnic tensions weren't returned before press time. At the time of the riot, state prisons spokesman Howard Skolnik described the melee as "racial in nature."
As summer nears, the county source expects animosities to heat up, spreading to other neighborhoods and, possibly, other campuses with significant black and Hispanic populations.
Says the P.O.: "People are worried that Rancho (which has seen its share of clashes between black and Hispanic students) and Desert Pines could be next."