Students return to Foss High, scared or resigned

TACOMA — Police cars were lined up outside of Foss High School this morning as students filed singlely and in groups through the entrance. Some were frightened, others resigned to the violence that struck their school Wednesday morning.

As classes opened for the first time since the shooting that left one teen dead, many students said they were uneasy about returning to the school.

"Columbine should have been the wake up call," senior Hunter Henderson said about what he described about the school's previous lack of security measures. He wasn't the only student who referred to the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado that killed 12 students and a teacher.

"We live in an urban environment," Henderson said. " Things are going to start getting worst not better and right now is the time we need to start doing these things."

Eric Mariano, a senior, was late because he wrestled with whether to come at all. His mother wanted him to stay home. But he figured he needed to return to school sooner or later. "I'm really scared though," said Mariano.

Some students said they feared the possiblity of a retalitory shooting by friends of either the victim or the shooter. "You just don't know if one of their friends is going to start shooting," said Michael Brim, a ninth-grader.

Many students said the worst part of Wednesday's shooting was not knowing if there was a single shooter and a single victim.

Just before 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, Tacoma police say, an 18-year-old acquaintance shot student Samnang "Sam" Kok several times in a school hallway, killing the 17-year-old outside a Junior ROTC classroom. Police arrested a fellow Foss student less than two hours later not far from the school.

The suspected shooter is Douglas Chanthabouly, according to booking records at the Pierce County Jail. He was booked into the jail on suspicion of first-degree murder and is scheduled to be arraigned in Pierce County Superior Court this afternoon.

Chanthabouly is on suicide watch, which is common in high-profile cases, said Pierce County sheriff's Detective Ed Troyer. According to Tacoma police, Chanthabouly does not have a criminal record.

Though a motive for the shooting wasn't immediately known, police said Wednesday that a disagreement may have sparked the violence that has thrown two families into mourning.

Kok's mother, Ry Sou, and her husband, Roth Kok, came to the U.S. from Cambodia in December 1988 hoping to provide a safe environment for their family.

"I don't care about working so hard. I am about my family. I came here to raise my family in freedom. And my son goes away from me," Sou sobbed as she watched television news reports about her son's death at their south Tacoma home.

In a tidy house on a cul-de-sac about six miles from the Kok home, Chanthabouly's mother was "inside crying her eyes out," said Chanthabouly's uncle, Soukanh Bounchanh, as he stood outside.

"He's a very nice and sweet boy. I don't know what came on him," Bounchanh said, adding that his nephew's arrest has shocked his family. "It's not like he was gang-banging or shooting. Nothing."

A school security officer called 911 at 7:26 a.m., just before the start of classes, to report that shots had been fired inside Foss High, Tacoma police spokesman Mark Fulghum said. Two Tacoma police officers arrived within minutes, helping teachers lock down the school by 7:30 a.m., he said.

Virtually every officer in the city responded to the school on South 19th Street, and teams of officers swept the building to confirm that the shooter had fled, Detective Chris Taylor said. Because of safety concerns in securing the building, officers weren't able to get to witnesses for about 10 minutes but then broadcast the suspect's name and description across police radios, Taylor said. A photo was distributed to some officers.

Vonitha Carter's son, Chase, a junior at Foss, called home around 7:30 a.m. with news of the shooting. Moments later, Carter saw a young man dressed in black hustling past her house on a dead-end street a few blocks from the school.

She said she called 911, believing the man she saw might be the shooter, then went back to the child-care center she runs out of her home. Two hours later, she noticed the same man scurrying back toward a main thoroughfare. She called 911 again, and police arrested the man a block away. Police said he was armed with a handgun.

"My family always tells me to stop being nosy, but my nosiness paid off," Carter said.

After students were allowed to leave school around 9:20 a.m., many gathered in the parking lot of a Fred Meyer store across the street from the school to talk or wait for parents to pick them up.

Several students said chaos erupted in the school immediately after the gunshots. Some thought the shots sounded like firecrackers, 10th-grader Malcolm Clark said.

"Everybody started running, and I was like, 'Those ain't firecrackers,' " he said.

"It was crazy," said 10th-grader Kelly Clymens. "People were running and the principal was yelling, 'Get in the gym, get in the gym!' "

Amy, a senior who declined to give her last name, said she was heading toward her locker and heard the gunshots. "I stopped and backed up and got low to the ground," she said.

When the shooting stopped, she peeked around the corner and saw a boy in jeans and a white hooded sweatshirt fall against the lockers, blood pouring from his body.

Chaos broke out immediately, Amy said. Kids were running in all directions. Administrators and teachers stormed down the halls, yelling for students to duck into classrooms.

Amy took off running, pausing only to shove another girl, who was screaming and crying uncontrollably, into the nearest classroom.

Then she heard what sounded like scores of police cars streaming to the scene. Officers swarmed the school from all directions, guns drawn.

"It was just madness," Amy said, her voice trembling.

Detectives have determined that the shooting was not random and it doesn't appear to be gang-related, Tacoma Police Chief Don Ramsdell said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon.

He declined to say how many times Kok had been shot.

"It's certainly not a comforting feeling to know this occurred in one of our public schools," Ramsdell said. "These things can happen anywhere in the country at any time ... I don't know that anything could've been done to prevent this."

Charles Milligan, the superintendent of Tacoma Public Schools, said classes at Foss, which has 1,737 students, would resume at 10 a.m. today and crisis counselors would be at the school.

Sou and Roth Kok said their son attended Foss, which is across town from their home, on the belief that it is a good, safe school.

Samnang means "lucky" or "fortunate" in Cambodian, and his parents believed he would live up to his name.

"I explain to him, no fighting, be a good boy," Sou said.

He was the family's handyman, fixing leaky plumbing and cutting hair. He and his brothers helped build their parents a Craftsman-style home several years ago. He planned to join the Army next year out of a sense of duty to his parents' adoptive country.

Kok had a son, Makhai, from a relationship with a girlfriend. The child lives with the Kok (pronounced "Coke") family.

Last year, when Roth Kok was hospitalized for several months with severe pneumonia, Sam stayed out of school for a month to nurse his father, who is still too ill to return to work as a janitor. Sam then planted rows of apple trees around the house.

"He said, 'Mom, don't worry, when Dad wakes up, the apple trees will grow,' " Sou said. "He makes me feel so good, he makes my heart open."

Sara Jean Green: 206-515-5654 or sgreen@seattletimes.com

Jonathan Martin: 206-464-2605 or jmartin@seattletimes.com

Information from Seattle Times staff reporter Maureen O'Hagan, news researchers Miyoko Wolf and Gene Balk, and The Associated Press is included in this report.