Hundreds of mourners attended a vigil Thursday to honor the memory of a student who fell from a 4th-floor guardrail to his death at Benjamin Franklin High School in Highland Park.
Officials have not released details about what preceded the fall. But videos circulating online, described as occurring Wednesday at Franklin High, show a fight in a classroom between two students, with one hitting the other, and a male student jumping from a fourth-floor outdoor corridor as another student approaches.
Police said the student fell around 1 p.m. Wednesday. The Los Angeles Fire Department took the student to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating. A spokesman said Thursday that the department did not have additional details to share.
A student lights a candle among flowers at a vigil for Xavier at Benjamin Franklin High School.
(David Butow / For The Times)
Authorities have not released the student’s identity, but the name Xavier was on the lips of hundreds who turned out to remember him. Social media posts and an online fundraiser also have identified him by his first name.
“He was so funny,” said senior Reighdan Rivera-Carrera, who knew Xavier since the second grade. “He loved to laugh at everybody’s jokes. We would sit in class, and he would sit across from me, and I would talk to my desk partner, and I would look up, and he’d be laughing at the stuff I would say. And he was like a good friend. Like if you needed him to be there for you, he was going to be there for you. And he just always had a smile.
“It shouldn’t have happened,” she added. “None of us deserved to see it, and he didn’t deserve to go through what he was going through that made him act on it the way that he did, and I think that we all just need to pray for peace.”
Reighdan did not know why there was a conflict between the two boys. She was not in the art class where the beating occurred.
The mourners, who included Xavier’s family members, stood in silence, as people crowded for more than an hour under the pedestrian bridge that connects the main campus to the athletic fields across the streets.
Hundreds of candles flickered. Thousands of flowers caught the last beams of the afternoon sun.
Longtime campus volunteer Monica Alcaraz asked if anyone wanted to speak. A football coach stepped forward to say that the entire staff wanted to help students in any way they needed.
Alcaraz said she wanted extra counseling resources to remain at the school as the community processed its grief.
Students lay flowers as friends, classmates and community members gather at Benjamin Franklin High School for a vigil for student Xavier.
(David Butow / For The Times)
Students described a somber, quiet day in school Thursday, with many absent. In interviews, some parents expressed concerns about bullying, but also did not feel Franklin High was worse than other campuses. Students interviewed said they felt safe, but that they would be more aware of classmates who were not doing well.
“That just shows to you that, like you never know what someone’s going through, and that you should always, if someone seems sad or anything, just check up on them,” ninth-grader Andrew Rivas said. He added that he has not been bullied but that he intended to stand up to bullies.
Fanny Salazar, a nurse at a different school and a Franklin graduate, said bullying has become dangerously commonplace at schools in general.
“What we can learn from this is to keep his memory alive, and keep talking about this and trying to prevent it from happening,” Salazar said.
Though circumstances leading up to the death still were being investigated, there was no evidence of foul play, authorities said.
This conclusion has puzzled some who saw the videos of the beating and its immediate aftermath. One video shows the attacker shouting racial slurs at the victim.
Franklin High on Wednesday sent a message to families that said it also couldn’t share additional information given privacy and confidentially laws, but that mental health professionals would be on site to provide student support.
“We encourage families to check in with their children and remind them that it is okay to seek support when needed,” the message said.
Families, students and staff can also call (213) 241-3840 to access mental health services and other resources.
The incident happened a day after a regular meeting of the L.A. Unified School District school safety committee. During that meeting, officials showcased data indicating that the number of violent incidents was lower last year compared to the year before, even accounting for a sharp enrollment decline.
The district’s primary discipline strategy — other than sound day-to-day classroom management — is based on counseling practice called restorative justice that emphasizes students learning to take personal responsibility for their actions, as well as taking steps to remedy the consequences of inappropriate behavior.
Students hug while attending a vigil for the late Xavier Nungarary.
(David Butow/For the Times)
The school system has added staff in support of this approach, while simultaneously banning school police officers from campus except in emergencies and sharply reducing the size of the school police force.
Historically, two school police officers were assigned to Franklin in an effort keep violence from the surrounding neighborhood from spilling onto campus, according to former school board member David Tokofsky, who used to represent that school community.
Supporters of school police have said a police presence would make on-campus fights and bullying less likely.
A GoFundMe fundraising page described Xavier as “a beautiful, caring, and loving boy who meant so much to the people around him.”
The fundraiser set an initial goal of $12,000 to “cover funeral services and ease some of the financial burden [for the family] during this incredibly difficult time.”
As of early Thursday afternoon, more than $32,000 had been raised.
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