PREPARING FOR THE WORST SHOOTINGS AT SCHOOL SIMULATED.

Byline: Eugene Tong Staff Writer

NEWHALL - With his last breath, 12-year-old Matt Grant lifted his finger to show a team of sheriff's deputies the whereabouts of a make-believe gunman running loose at Placerita Junior High, then keeled over against a brick wall.

``I got shot in the chest and had to show them where the guy went,'' said Grant of Saugus, who took part in a school shooting drill Thursday for Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies.

Armed with pistols of solid plastic, some 25 Santa Clarita deputies navigated through a series of victims and a half-dozen screaming children, while picking up clues along the way that would lead them to their man.

It's all intended to give deputies the skills to react to the unthinkable, said Detective Pat O'Neill, a sheriff's juvenile crime investigator who organized the exercise.

``The bad guys could be anywhere and the situation can change any time,'' he said. ``You have to get the guys to think on their feet.''

Traditionally, school shootings are handled by special tactical units. But Detective Chris Henning said it could take up to an hour for a Special Weapons and Tactics team to reach Santa Clarita. He said it's up to local sheriff's deputies - usually the first ones on scene - to help stem further loss of life until reinforcements arrive.

``That was one of the problems in Columbine,'' he said, referring to the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., that left 15 people, including the two gunmen, dead. ``They waited for the SWAT team to arrive.''

A group of children recruited by O'Neill's 13-year-old daughter Tracy added another hurdle. Some sprawled on picnic tables feigning injuries while others kept deputies on their toes by leaping out from around corners. Others offered deputies key information about the suspect - if they were asked the right questions.

``They can suddenly jump out at you,'' O'Neill said. ``The kids make it more realistic.''

In the day's final exercise, a team of deputies filed through the quad as several gunshots - blanks, of course - rang out from behind a portable building, sending a group of children scurrying their way. One deputy asked the children where the gunman went, then sent them away.

They finally caught up with a rifleman played by Henning. With the deputies' toy guns pointed at him, he went down after a few cries of ``bang, bang.''

``The hardest part was dealing with the students that are running out,'' said Deputy Robert Wilkinson. ``We're training so we can respond to these situations to the best of our abilities.''

For Tracy O'Neill, a student at Arroyo Seco Junior High, school shootings are another anxiety today's teens must live with.

``You don't think about it every day,'' she said. ``But it does get in my mind every once in a while.''

Eugene Tong, [phone]

eugene.tong(at)dailynews.com

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4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2 -- color) Deputies from the Santa Clarita sheriff's station staged a drill at Placerita Junior High School on Thursday, simulating a gunman on campus shooting students. Above, deputies fan out around a student, searching for the gunman, while at right, Danielle Finn, front left, Samantha Jaennette and Brooke Shindelus, right, pose as victims.

(3) Sheriff's deputies corner a gunman, played by Detective Chris Henning, in a Placerita Junior High hallway during a drill.

(4) Santa Clarita sheriff's station investigator Tony Arnold, left, and a uniformed deputy take part in a drill Thursday at Placerita Junior High School, simulating an on-campus attack by a gunman.

Charlotte Schmid-Maybach/Staff Photographer