A season-opening high school football game at Los Angeles Southwest College turned to chaos Friday night when reports of gunfire sent deputies swarming the stadium and spectators fleeing north toward Imperial Highway. The matchup between King/Drew Magnet High School of Medicine and Science and San Pedro High School was halted in the third quarter, with San Pedro leading 21-6, after the reports surfaced around 8:52 p.m.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said it received the call shortly before 9 p.m., according to ABC7 Los Angeles. Deputies placed the area on lockdown and searched for a possible suspect while guiding fleeing students and spectators away from the stadium, which sits at 1600 West Imperial Highway and holds roughly 2,500 spectators, according to Facilitron. King/Drew regularly hosts its home games at the community college stadium because its Willowbrook campus lacks a full-sized football venue of its own, per the Los Angeles Times.
Authorities ultimately found no evidence that a shooting had occurred, and officials had not released further details as of Saturday morning, per the same ABC7 account. Video from the scene showed at least one woman being taken away on a stretcher, though it remains unclear whether that medical transport stemmed from a fall during the evacuation rush, panic, or an unrelated medical issue. Fire department paramedics treated and transported one individual from the stadium while sheriff's deputies searched for evidence, as reported by MyNewsLA.com, which noted that multi-agency protocols require joint dispatch of the Sheriff's Department and Fire Department whenever gunfire is reported at a public gathering venue.
Team Official Pushes Back on Viral Claims
As the lockdown unfolded, rumors of an active shooter spread rapidly across social media and safety-tracking platforms. King/Drew football official Steven Lewis moved quickly to knock down the panic, posting on X that reports of a shooting at Los Angeles Southwest College were “fake news” and that no gunshots had occurred at the venue, according to the Hindustan Times.
Deputies from the Sheriff's Department's South Los Angeles Station, located at 1310 West Imperial Highway just blocks from the campus, were positioned to respond quickly given the short distance. Security at Los Angeles Southwest College is otherwise maintained around the clock by the Sheriff's Department's Community College Bureau, which runs a dedicated on-campus Sheriff's Office, according to the college's own safety page.
A Tense Night Across California
The scare in South Los Angeles unfolded the same night as an actual shooting at a varsity football game at Independence High School in Bakersfield, where a staff member reported that one person was shot in the chest, according to Times Now. The dual incidents underscored heightened anxiety surrounding opening weekend of the California high school football season, coming amid both real and unconfirmed threats at campuses statewide.
Los Angeles schools have weathered similar mass scares before. In the fall of 2022, hoax calls triggered full lockdowns and police evacuations at both Hollywood High School and Los Angeles High School, incidents that showed how unverified reports can force emergency crews to treat every threat as real until a campus is fully searched, per FOX 11 Los Angeles.
Los Angeles Southwest College, which opened in 1967 in the wake of the 1965 Watts Riots to expand access to higher education in South Central Los Angeles, is one of nine campuses in the Los Angeles Community College District and serves thousands of residents across the West Athens and South Los Angeles communities. Friday night's disruption marked an unsettling start to the season for both programs, even as officials worked to reassure the community that the danger, this time, had not been real.
