Slaying Prompts Call for Tougher Security

RIO LINDA, Calif. —  The arrest last week of a high school janitor in the campus slaying of an 18-year-old senior prompted top state administrators Monday to demand a toughening of school security policies.

In the wake of last Friday’s day-time killing at Rio Linda High School, grief-stricken parents and students in this rural community just north of Sacramento are incredulous that their school would hire a janitor like 34-year-old Alex del Thomas.

Police say he used makeup to cover a “107” tattooed on his forehead--a mark that identifies members of the 107th Street Hoover Crips gang in Los Angeles.

He was also on parole from Folsom prison for a 1986 manslaughter conviction--although he correctly stated on his job application just a month ago that he had no arrests in the prior seven years.

Most of all, officials said the existing safeguards failed. Authorities said a criminal background check of Thomas was underway and would have alerted school officials this week to a history of violent crimes.

“I would say this is a wake-up call for California,” state School Supt. Delaine Eastin said Monday. “It is time to strengthen the laws to protect the students. Nobody broke any rules here. It’s just that some poor child paid a terrible price because the laws are not what they need to be.”

Michelle Montoya, an outgoing soccer team athlete and football enthusiast, was just three weeks from graduation when she was found in the school’s wood shop about 4 p.m. last Friday.

Friends say she had stayed a few hours late at school before planning to attend a school-sponsored graduation party that night. Police speculated that Montoya may have gone into the wood shop to use a telephone to call her father for a ride home.

Her slaying was reported by Thomas, who first alerted another school employee and then called police. Thomas was arrested within hours after police said they obtained evidence linking him to the crime.

Thomas has denied responsibility for the death in published reports. He is scheduled to be arraigned today.

Authorities said Montoya’s skull had been crushed and her throat was slashed. They said she had also been stabbed in the back.

Monday, the flag at Rio Linda High School flew at half-staff. Montoya’s soccer uniform number was retired and a large hand-lettered poster in the front window read, “We will cherish you always.”

At 8 a.m., students left their classrooms to join in a memorial gathering and to sing hymns in a square on campus.

They also piled mementos--teddy bears, flower bouquets, poems and hand-written messages--around a large shade tree in front of the campus.

“She was a nice, pretty lady. She didn’t deserve this,” said Brian Mertz, a senior, who came to school Monday mainly to “pay my respects.

“She knew the whole school, not just the seniors.”

On Sunday, school board members responded to the killing with an emergency meeting. Some of the 500 parents and students--while urging calm--angrily demanded the resignations of top district administrators.

“It could have been any of our kids--they hired a murderer,” said Jannine Chadaris, whose 16-year-old daughter stayed home from school Monday.

Perhaps what has most frustrated state and local officials is that the school system took steps more than 20 years ago to prevent the hiring of potential campus predators.

Thomas was fingerprinted when he was hired by the Grant Joint Union School District a little more than a month ago as a temporary employee. He was assigned full-time to Rio Linda High School just two days before the killing.

State law requires criminal background checks--with fingerprints--for non-credentialed school employees at districts with more than 400,000 students. That does not include Grant Joint Union School District, even though it followed the policy.

There are separate rules governing background checks for teachers.

Eastin said she is concerned that almost all districts in California are not required to do background checks on non-credentialed employees. She was also concerned that Thomas was allowed to work before his background check was completed.

“No one who is convicted of a violent felony should ever work with children,” Eastin said.

School officials also were troubled to learn Monday that the fingerprint check--adopted as state law in 1977--will only identify criminals with a record in California.

State law also does not prohibit the non-credentialed hiring of a convicted killer, although it would block the employment of many drug or sex-related felons.

Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren’s office said Monday that it received Thomas’ fingerprints for the routine background check last Wednesday and was scheduled to return them this Wednesday.

Robert Stutzman, a spokesman for Lungren, said the justice department will guarantee the background checks are completed within 30 days at a fee of $32. For an additional $10, it will expedite the process to a seven-day turnaround.

Stutzman said the Grant school district had paid for that expedited process. But it apparently did not forward the fingerprints until weeks after Thomas had been hired.

Eastin complained that local school officials have told her the background check can take between three and six months.

Stutzman said the Grant school district would have learned this week that Thomas has a long history of violence.

In 1982, he was sentenced to four years in state prison for armed robbery. He was paroled in 1984. Two years later he was convicted of manslaughter.

Tip Kindel, spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said Thomas had demanded money from a man in a parked truck. When the victim tried to drive away, Thomas shot and killed him.

Thomas was sentenced to 18 years, eight months, but was paroled after only eight years, in June 1994. He was ordered back to prison that November on wife beating charges, and released again in August 1995.