Los Angeles student, 17, killed crossing street after schools shut down over hoax threat

A 17-year-old student was killed Tuesday morning as he was crossing the street in Los Angeles after schools shut down over what reportedly turned out to be a hoax threat.

The teen, who was not named, was struck and killed by a city service truck in the Highland Park neighborhood not far from Los Angeles International Charter High School, where he attended, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The accident occurred after the Los Angeles Unified School District closed all campuses due to a threat sent to school board members. The charter school is not part of the district, but closed Tuesday anyway due to its proximity to other L.A. Unified schools, the Times reported.

Muath Qagi, a AAA employee, said he saw the teen’s mother at the scene of her son’s death, screaming: “My son! My son!”

“She was on the ground, just crying, screaming,” he told the Times.

Mr. Qagi said the driver sat on the curb by his truck, crying with his face in his hands.

The truck driver told authorities he did not see the teen, police said, but immediately stopped after the incident to help. The teen was pronounced dead by Los Angeles Fire Department officers, the Times reported.

The teen was an “awesome student,” who had just been accepted to film school at Cal State L.A., according to Clifford Moseley, the charter school’s executive director.

LAPD Det. Meghan Aguilar said the driver, a 27-year-old city employee, was “very distraught,” but being “fully cooperative” with investigators. 

The nation’s second-largest school district shut down Tuesday after school board members received what the district called a “credible” threat. Authorities in New York City said they received the same threat but quickly concluded that it was a hoax. New York Police Commissioner William Bratton criticized Los Angeles officials for what he called a “significant overreaction.”

L.A. Police Chief Charlie Beck said at a news conference Tuesday: “It is very easy in hindsight to criticize a decision based on results the decider could never have known.”