Fight at Party Is Linked to Boy’s Shooting : Violence: El Toro High student may have been hit in retaliation for a Halloween brawl. No arrests are reported.

LAKE FOREST —  A fight at a Halloween party apparently prompted the drive-by shooting this week of an El Toro High School sophomore a block from campus, according to police and witnesses.

The 16-year-old boy was shot three times--once in each leg and in the abdomen, where the bullet ricocheted and caused further injury--from a passing car about 3:25 p.m. Wednesday as he walked with a friend on his usual route home from school. A dark blue or black compact car with tinted windows, carrying three males, was seen speeding from the scene, the 25000 block of Romera Place, investigators said.

No arrests had been made by Thursday evening, Sheriff’s Lt. Dick Olson said.

“We don’t have it totally tied down, but there was a fight at a party . . . that might have contributed to it,” said Olson, who said it was still unknown whether the shooting was gang-related.

Students and friends of the boy, who is recuperating at a hospital, agreed that the shooting was linked to a fight at a local party. The shooting victim is not a gang member, his friends said.

“There was a party on Halloween, and some guys from L.A. came to it. Then there was some trouble,” said Will Taboy, another El Toro High School sophomore who said he has known the victim since the seventh grade. Taboy said the party was held at a friend of the victim’s.

Although this was the ninth shooting to occur at or near a county school campus this fall, Olson called the shooting “not normal” and emphasized that the shooting did not take place on school grounds. It did occur within sight of the campus on Toledo Way.

“This is kind of out of the ordinary,” Olson said. He said that the last such attack in Lake Forest occurred in December. In that shooting, a teen-ager was killed in his home by a gunman passing by in a car in retaliation for an altercation at a party.

Parents, teachers and Saddleback Valley Unified School District board members also described the shooting as isolated and having nothing to do with the school.

El Toro High School PTA President Karen Waldron said the faculty and parents at the school had been working very hard recently to “improve the atmosphere” at the 2,200-student campus, which had some racial fighting several years ago.

“This certainly is very rare down in this area,” said Waldron, a mother of three. “We are trying to build a positive situation for our kids. But we can’t control the problem of someone coming down from L.A. and doing something like this.”

Extra security was ordered for the campus Thursday and, at a specially called faculty meeting before school, teachers were told to be watchful of students who might need counseling, Waldron said.

George Anderson, the president of the district teachers’ union, called the shooting “very disturbing” for students and faculty. Attacks such as this open the eyes of everyone who attends or works at a school, he said.

“I think that for some time there has been an attitude that violence and guns and those things are problems for teachers in South-Central L.A., or Chicago or New York, but not in beautiful Mission Viejo, or lovely Laguna Niguel,” said Anderson, 45, a Laguna Niguel resident. “But, clearly, we are having these sorts of incidents in our neighborhoods. . . . Certainly, it is a tragic situation.”

Because of the shooting, Anderson said teachers were told to be sensitive “to the concerns of our students and the kinds of feelings they might be feeling.”

Anderson, a U.S. history teacher with 22 years’ experience, said: “Although for the individual involved, this is as big a problem as can be, I think the message (for teachers) is to try to help the other kids keep this in perspective and not to overreact or blow it out of proportion.”

Debbie J. Hughes, a newly elected board member of the Saddleback Valley Unified School District, said she wants the district to take a proactive role in fighting teen problems.

“I think this was a very isolated incident and not a big problem on our campuses,” Hughes said. “But as a new board member, we are going to look at tougher gang-prevention methods to fight these things and drug-abuse problems. We are going to attack them before it gets bad.”

Times correspondent Anna Cekola contributed to this report.