Police said the victim was shot in the thigh outside Sepulveda Middle School during afternoon pickup time.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — A 17-year-old boy was wounded in a shooting outside Sepulveda Middle School in North Hills on Wednesday afternoon, and Los Angeles police identified a 13-year-old boy as the suspect as investigators worked through the night to piece together what led to the gunfire.
The shooting drew a large police response and forced the campus into lockdown during a busy school pickup period. Authorities said the victim was not a student at the school but had been walking there to pick up a younger sibling. The case quickly raised urgent questions about how a gun ended up near a middle school, whether the suspect had any connection to the campus, and what security steps schools and police would take next.
Police said officers responded at about 3 p.m. to reports of gunfire near Sepulveda Middle School in the North Hills neighborhood. When they arrived, they found the teenage victim suffering from a gunshot wound to the thigh. He was taken to a hospital for treatment. Investigators said the shooting happened on school property in front of the campus, though not inside the fenced school grounds. Capt. Garrett Peyton of the Los Angeles Police Department said the victim had been walking toward the school to pick up a younger sibling when some kind of argument broke out. Officers later said the teen did not appear to have been randomly struck, though they had not publicly described a clear motive. By late Wednesday, police had named a 13-year-old boy as the suspected shooter and said he had not yet been arrested.
Police said the gun believed to have been used in the shooting was found and collected at the scene, a detail that could become central to the investigation into how the weapon was obtained and who brought it there. Authorities did not immediately say whether the firearm belonged to the suspect or someone else, or whether it had been reported stolen. They also said it was not immediately clear whether the suspect had any gang ties. A witness told local media the suspect was believed to be a student at Sepulveda Middle School, but officials had not publicly confirmed that by the time the latest reports were published. Two people were initially detained as officers sorted out witness accounts, but police later cleared and released them. No other injuries were reported, and LAPD said there were no additional threats to the campus after the shooting.
The scene unfolded in front of students, families and school staff during the afternoon release period, giving the case immediate weight beyond the criminal inquiry itself. Shootings near campuses often trigger overlapping responses from city police, school police and district officials, and this one did the same. Video from the scene showed law enforcement vehicles outside the school and nearby streets closed as investigators marked evidence and interviewed witnesses. One student, Alessandro Valdivia, described hearing loud bangs and then seeing people run as panic spread through the crowd. Another student, Santo Jimenez, said he saw two youths fighting before the shot was fired. Their accounts suggested a fast-moving confrontation rather than a prolonged attack, but many details remained unsettled Wednesday night, including exactly how the dispute began and who else may have seen the moments before the gunfire.
School officials moved quickly to secure the campus. In a message to families, the principal said the injured person was not a Sepulveda Middle School student and said the school had requested help from the Los Angeles School Police Department because of the shooting’s proximity to campus. The lockdown remained in place until about 5 p.m., when officials said it was lifted. The Los Angeles Unified School District said extra patrols would be assigned to the campus out of caution, and the district also said additional staff and mental health resources would be available when students returned. Those steps reflected the immediate shift from emergency response to recovery, as administrators prepared to reopen school while police continued searching for the juvenile suspect and reviewing witness statements, physical evidence and the recovered weapon.
For families gathered outside the school, the gunfire turned an ordinary pickup into a chaotic crime scene. Students described fear, confusion and the sight of crowds moving quickly away from the area after the shot rang out. The victim’s relatives told another local outlet he was expected to survive, though police publicly identified him as 17 while family members described him as 15. That discrepancy had not been reconciled in public reporting by late Wednesday. It was also not clear whether the victim and suspect knew each other well before the confrontation, though relatives said the suspected gunman had been harassing the boy and trying to start fights in the days leading up to the shooting. Those claims had not been independently detailed by police, but they pointed investigators toward possible prior contact between the two youths.
As of the latest updates, the victim was expected to survive, the suspected 13-year-old shooter had not been publicly reported in custody, and police had not announced any charges. The next milestone is likely a police update on the suspect’s status and any juvenile court proceedings tied to the case.
Author note: Last updated April 16, 2026.