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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Friday, March 9, 2007

Nanakuli fight leads to 11 arrests

By Will Hoover
Advertiser Leeward O'ahu Writer

NANAKULI — Eleven Nanakuli High and Intermediate students were arrested yesterday and suspended following a fight that began in the school's parking lot, spread briefly to the street and back to the campus.

That fight was broken up by police, who were already at the school dealing with an earlier fight involving some of the same students.

Police Lt. Dan Ford said the fight was a continuation of one that occurred on campus a week ago involving two opposing male factions. Six students were arrested and suspended from school following that incident.

Ford said five of the students arrested yesterday were among the six arrested last week.

Yesterday's trouble began when a number of those suspended students showed up on campus. Police were called because the students were considered trespassers, school officials said.

"That was the first altercation, which was broken up before anything actually occurred," Ford said. "They were calling each other out," he said of the two groups. "One group was told to go home, under suspension. And as they were leaving, the second group saw them" and another fray broke out.

Parents had been called to pick up the suspended students, Ford said.

"The parents loaded kids up in the truck, and as they were driving out of the parking lot, the other kids saw them and chased the vehicle down," said Ford, who added that no weapons were used and that while the fracas was volatile, it involved more posturing and shouting than physical contact.

"By this time, the whole school knew there was going to be a fight, and the parents couldn't drive off the campus, because the driveway was blocked by all the kids watching the fight."

Ford said the 11 arrested students were booked on suspicion of disorderly conduct and then released to their parents.

"They're going to have to go to Juvenile Court," he said. "I don't know what kind of intervention the school is going to do. But the school's investigation is ongoing."

School principal Levi Chang said three related fights took place at the school yesterday morning.

"It was a throw-over from the incident that happened last week," he said. "I wouldn't say it was exactly gang-related, but it kind of looks that way."

The students involved were all from Nanakuli High and Intermediate, and they all have been suspended for the remainder of the semester, which ends March 16, Chang said. He said school officials will meet today with parents of the students involved, and the students themselves, to discuss what can be done to resolve the problem.

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.