Hundreds of mourners gathered Thursday at Benjamin Franklin High School in Highland Park for a vigil honoring Xavier, a student who fell from a fourth-floor guardrail on campus Wednesday and later died. The gathering came as the Los Angeles Police Department continued its investigation into what happened before the fall.
Police said the fall happened around 1 p.m. Wednesday. The Los Angeles Fire Department took the student to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Social media posts and an online fundraiser identified him by his first name, and the name Xavier was on the lips of hundreds who came to remember him.
Reighdan Rivera-Carrera remembers Xavier
Senior Reighdan Rivera-Carrera said she had known Xavier since the second grade. She described him as funny, a friend who laughed easily, and someone who always had a smile.
"He was so funny," she said. "He loved to laugh at everybody’s jokes." She added, "And he just always had a smile."
Rivera-Carrera also said, "Like if you needed him to be there for you, he was going to be there for you." She said she did not know why there was a conflict between the two boys and was not in the art class where the beating occurred.
Benjamin Franklin High School vigil
The mourners, including Xavier’s family members, stood in silence under the pedestrian bridge that connects the main campus to the athletic fields across the streets. Hundreds of candles flickered, and thousands of flowers were present as the vigil stretched for more than an hour.
Students described Thursday as a somber, quiet day at school, with many absent. A football coach said the entire staff wanted to help students in any way they needed, while Monica Alcaraz said she wanted extra counseling resources to remain at the school as the community processed its grief.
Questions after the fall
Parents and students described concerns about bullying, but some parents did not feel Franklin High was worse than other campuses, and students interviewed said they felt safe. Andrew Rivas, a ninth-grader, said, "That just shows to you that, like you never know what someone’s going through, and that you should always, if someone seems sad or anything, just check up on them," and said he intended to stand up to bullies.
Fanny Salazar said, "What we can learn from this is to keep his memory alive, and keep talking about this and trying to prevent it from happening," and added that bullying has become dangerously commonplace at schools in general. The police investigation remains the only process that can answer what preceded the Wednesday fall at Benjamin Franklin High School.
